Justin Taylor's first story collection, Everything Here Is the Best Thing After , earned him comparisons to Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, and Philip Roth. The New York Times Book Review recognized "a new voice that readers -- and writers, too -- might be seeking out for decades." In Flings , Taylor returns to flex a rippling array of new literary muscles. In twelve incisive and interconnected stories, Taylor measures the psychic vibrations of characters who are unmoored from their pasts and uncertain of their futures. Taylor's prose strikes upon profundity at speed and reveals meaning hidden in the rush of his characters' lives. The couples in "Gregory's Year" and "The Happy Valley" find temporary shelter in one another before separating in a whirlwind of technology and travel. The widowed retiree in "Carol, Alone" dreams of disruption or escape, while being terrorized by a portentous reptile. In "A Talking Cure," engaged academics embark upon a "truth session," uncovering the many guises of a radioactive secret.

And in "Saint Wade," a pseudo-stepdad wonders, "what would that be like.to live your whole life in motion -- to never even know what it meant to rest?" Taylor, "a master of the modern snapshot" ( Los Angeles Times ), traverses an invigorating range of empathy and insight. His language both crackles and streams. And Flings is a commanding and full-throated work from one of America's most talented young writers.