Rattle of Want

by  Gay Degani

278 pages – published November 2015

paperback ISBN:  978-1-925101-67-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-925101-68-3

to purchase, click here for  paperback  /  ePub  /  Amazon Kindle  /  B & N NOOKbook  /  Kobobooks  /  iBookstore

click here for a taste of Rattle of Want

 

featuring 46 short stories and the novella The Old Road

what people are saying about Rattle of Want

Award-winning author, Gay Degani, kills it again with this new collection. By turns smart, tender, dark, and always compelling, Degani gives us life in all its skewed realities and does so with finesse and vigor. This book is a knockout.

Kathy Fish, author of Together We Can Bury It

 

Short stories are one of the purest forms of storytelling. Luckily for us, Gay Degani is a master at it.

Robert Swartwood, USA Today bestselling author of New Avalon

 

Short, bittersweet stories from a writer who knows just what makes us tick. Some are heart-stopping, some heart-breaking, but all these stories will make your world wider.

Sarah Hilary, author of the Someone Else’s Skin and No Other Darkness

 

Rattle of Want is a narrative road trip across America, driven by memorable characters and prose with muscle. Degani is a consummate storyteller and a virtuosa of short fiction.

Christopher Allen, 2015 winner of Ginosoko Literary Journal’s Flash Fiction Award and managing editor of SmokeLong Quarterly

 

If you think of stories as noises, then Gay Degani will sometimes have you clamping your ears and other times leaning forward to soak every detail in. Her stories can be quiet and subtle or loud and bold. She pairs the ugly, imperfect, bumbling pieces of ourselves with the pure, beautiful parts of our souls – and the result is a magnificent symphony you want to replay again and again.

Tara Laskowski, author of Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons and Bystanders

 

Gay Degani has a talent for the observational narrative. This collection of stories is rich with vivid details and tangible desires. Rattle of Want leaves you wanting more!

Diane Vallere, bestselling author of the Material Witness Mysteries

 

Gay Degani is a champion of the short form, packing so much emotional punch into each of her pieces that reading her latest collection, Rattle of Want, is like going ten incredible rounds with a flash-fiction heavyweight. From the medical traumas of Abbreviated Glossary to the murderous urges of Complicit to the natural devastations of Monsoon, Degani’s stories unearth the nuggets of humanity from characters in extremis.

Rachael Warecki’s work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, the Masters Review, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere

 

The stories in this book are a masterclass in narrative craftsmanship. From the brief sparks of her microfiction to the meditations of her long stories to the tapestry of her novella-in-flash, Gay Degani displays a mastery for calling forth human characters and conjuring whole lives out of meticulously wrought images and moments. Rattle of Want is a beautiful, smart collection.

Samuel Snoek-Brown, author of Box Cutters and Hagridden

 

Each story in Rattle of Want made me flinch. A gun fired at the starting line, packed with either live ammunition, sex dream confetti, love or loss flash of party powder, or sometimes just a beautiful song, the likes of which you’ll never hear again this pure. When Gay Degani pulls the trigger, we leap up with joy.

Bud Smith, author of F 250, Tollbooth and I’m From Electric Peak

 

Like a cleansing rain, pithy flashes and a penetrating novella hit the substantial body of Gay Degani’s phenomenal Rattle of Want, causing pools of meaning to ripple out forever. The language is sharp, the characters palpable, the situations exceptional. Read it!

Bonnie ZoBell, author of What Happened Here

 

Rattle of Want ranges from brilliant brief experiments (such as Abbreviated Glossary and Appendages) to a novella-in-flash (The Old Road) for the canon in that new genre. Altogether these stories mine the wants and desires in the breakups of families, rebellions of youth, and occasional ascents of the spirit. Often they beautifully, and simply, nail a place, as in Small Town (a perfect evocation of the title), report an impending explosion, as in Kindling (a quintessential flash), or capture a character (if you haven’t met Blusterfuck … do so at your own peril). Few writers can do all that Gay Degani does.

Robert Shapard, editor of Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World