John Goldbach's utterly original debut collection offers funny and penetrating tales of people struggling with faith, addiction, sex and mortality. Written in a fresh and assured style, these stories follow characters through crack-ups, meltdowns and blackouts. A man faces the existential void as he tries to quit smoking with a self-help book; an overheated cooking show host battles the Cancún sun with increasingly elaborate blender drinks; and small-town teenagers asphyxiate themselves for something to do. Generous and knowing, the eleven stories in Selected Blackouts read with all the strange clarity of coming to.

John Goldbach is the author of The Devil and the Detective, a novel, and Selected Blackouts, a story collection.

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Selected Blackouts illuminates the alternating currents of youthful highs and lows fueled by nicotine and booze and evasive sensuality with occasional sudden sex and attempts to quit all the delightful vices, but vices remain way too delightful. This is sort of Salinger updated, fast-forwarded a few years, and intoxicated, with joyful results. — Josip Novakovich, author of April Fool's Day and Infidelities