The Bigness of the World

Set among such divergent places as a small-town in Minnesota, an Albuquerque airport, A Belizean café and a hotel swimming pool in Java, Ostlund's Flannery O'Connor Award (2008) winning debut collection depicts sexually and socially repressed Americans. Men and women who wind up feeling displaced when they fail to escape the influence of their past; ineffectual parents, fathers and lovers who disappear, teachers who struggle to connect with their students, and lifelong obsessions with language.