Gizzards & Hearts: Stories

“Matt Fiander’s characters are like archeologists, excavating and deciphering the scree of their own lives. Each new terrain felt equally riveting to me, whether the seemingly mundane, like the Chambersburg Applebee’s, or the urbane, like a Copenhagen jazz club, or the terrifying, like a slowly burning suburb, and his exquisite control of the language applies equally to middle-school insults as elegant extended metaphors. This book requires attention, and these stories compelled me to give it freely.”

—Xhenet Aliu, author of Everybody Says It’s Everything and Brass

“I found myself constantly surprised reading these stories, sometimes by an image or a turn of phrase, but more often by the ending. Many of the stories set themselves up for two possible outcomes, and while these often seem like the two expected outcomes, two expected paths, each time Fiander finds another, stranger resolution. These stories are made memorable and remarkable in those moments—when the unexpected arrives with the expected, slamming into the same space, whether it’s a child’s treehouse or a jazz club in Copenhagen or a freshwater dock fishing for crab.”

—Paul Crenshaw, author of Melt With Me and This We’ll Defend