“Remarkable. . . . The characters throughout are expertly rendered and deeply relatable. . . . Sanders’ stories are unforgettable, making this a strong and promising debut.” — Booklist, starred review
Shannon Sanders’s sparkling debut brings us into the company of the Collins family and their acquaintances as they meet, bicker, compete, celebrate, worry, keep and reveal secrets, build lives and careers, and endure. Moving from Atlantic City to New York to DC, from the 1960s to the 2000s, from law students to drag performers to violinists to matriarchs, Company tells a multifaceted, multigenerational saga in thirteen stories.
Each piece in Company includes a moment when a guest arrives at someone’s home. In “The Good, Good Men,” two brothers reunite to oust a “deadbeat” boyfriend from their mother’s house. In “The Everest Society,” the brothers’ sister anxiously prepares for a home visit from a social worker before adopting a child. In “Birds of Paradise,” their aunt, newly promoted to university provost, navigates a minefield of microaggressions at her own welcome party. And in the haunting title story, the provost’s sister finds her solitary life disrupted when her late sister’s daughter comes calling.
These are stories about intimacy, societal and familial obligations, and the ways inheritances shape our fates. Buoyant, somber, sharp, and affectionate, this collection announces a remarkable new voice in fiction.
BIO
Shannon Sanders lives and works near Washington, DC. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Electric Literature, Joyland, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, and was a 2020 winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.
REVIEWS
“Sanders excels in this masterly debut collection about a Black extended family . . . describing their slights, heartaches, and misbehavior with exquisite emotional acuity. This is a winner.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Sanders’ craft is precise, her writing absolutely gorgeous, but it’s this care and love for the flawed humans she’s created that captures our hearts as we read. . . . It’s not hyperbole to say that I laughed, cried, and was completely devastated by the end of this collection. I’d fallen so in love with this world, and with Sanders’ writing, that it was very hard to put Company down.” -- Hannah Grieco, Washington City Paper
“Subtly crafted. . . . The difficult aspects of negotiating family relationships are gently examined but, more interestingly, respected in their recounting. The complicated circuitry behind family alliances and breakdowns is artfully revealed.” -- Kirkus Reviews
“Secrets are kept, traumas heal and endure. A rich, multigenerational portrait of a Black family.” -- Electric Literature, “Must-Read Debut Short Story Collections of 2023”
[H] Graywolf Press / October 03, 2023
0.6" H x 9.2" L x 6.34" W (0.97 lbs) 208 pages