Christopher Coake

'I would like to claim that I discovered Christopher Coake but you can't really discover writers like this: the quality of the work is so blindingly obvious he was never going to labour in obscurity for any length of time ... We're In Trouble is, for the most part, a book about death - quite often, about how death affects the young ... Sometimes, when you're reading the stories, you forget to breathe, which probably means that you read them with more speed than the writer intended ... They're beautifully written, and they have bottom ... striking and dramatic' Nick Hornby, Believer

We're In Trouble

A “gripping, beautiful, emotionally raw” collection of stories about the things that go wrong between men and women from a PEN Award winner. Arriving in the midst of the #MeToo era, these stories examine the fallout from failed relationships between men and women—partnerships that have crumbled under the weight of betrayal, misplaced hopes, illness, and particularly masculinity at its most toxic and misguided. A man in his mid-thirties receives a call from a woman he barely knows, who informs him that a girl he bedded and dumped in high school has died of cancer. A man who had an affair and left the woman without any warning finds himself working on a demolition job with a younger man who might be their son. Yet another man, obese for years, is left by his wife, loses weight, and drunk with the power of finally being fit, tries to reconnect with his former spouse—to disastrous ends. And in the title story, a woman summoned to the bedside of her son, who has suffered a gunshot wound, must finally come to terms with the serial infidelities of her charming ex-husband. These fictions ask very contemporary questions: How do ex-spouses learn to live again in proximity to one another? How do we make peace with our bodies and their own worst impulses? How do we learn to turn and face, head-on, the worst mistakes of our younger selves? “One of our best American short story writers, on par with Tobias Wolff and Andre Dubus.” —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will “Engaging . . . rich prose and sharp dialogue.” —Publishers Weekly “The stories in You Would Have Told Me Not To read like miniature thrillers . . . expertly suspenseful, emotionally powerful, and delightfully dark. The last one, in particular, punched me in the heart.” —Kristin Roupenian, author of You Know You Want This: “Cat Person" and Other Stories

Stories

You Would Have Told Me Not To

An anthology of original writing from the teenagers participating in the 2018 University of Nevada, Reno Summer Youth Writing Program.

An Anthology of Writing from the 2018 UNR Summer Youth Writing Program

Flatline

An anthology of original writing produced by the participants in the 2016 University of Nevada, Reno Youth Writing Program.

An Anthology of Writing from the 2016 UNR Youth Writing Program

We're Alwrite

Dani Shapiro

Christine Kitano

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

Portland Review's 2018 issue features writing by Molly Brodak, Dani Burlison, Christopher Coake, William Virgil Davis, Susan DeFreitas, Christine Kitano, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Eugene Lim, Molly Patterson, Anna Joy Springer, Jenny Forrester, Jacob White, an interview with Dani Shapiro, art by Anni Wilson, and work by many other exciting writers.

Portland Review Spring 2018

An astonishing first novel about love and belief, and the difficulty of letting go Thirty-something Midwesterner Mark Fife believes he has moved on from the accidental death of his young son and the subsequent break-up of his marriage. He's successful, he's in love again and he believes he's mastered his own memories. But then he's contacted by a strange woman who tells him she's living in his old house, the house where Brendan died, and she's convinced it's haunted by Brendan's ghost. Mark doesn't believe in ghosts, but his distressed ex-wife does, and Mark so much wants to help her. So much so that he begins to doubt his own beliefs and motives. And as he flirts with the idea of trying to contact his son, he begins to endanger the relationships that matter now in his life, with his fiancee Allison and his tough and sceptical father. You Came Back is a wonderfully affecting read about the nature of belief and bereavement, about old loves and new loves, and the hardships involved in letting go.

Christopher Coake

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