The new collection from writer and Short Review editor Tania Hershman will be published by Tangent Books on May 3rd. My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions has been described as "a scintillating collection of 56 short fictions by one of the genre’s most daring exponents, whose economy of words cloaks her subtlety and power. Tania Hershman’s work is powerful, spiky and off-beat but with a distinct warmth and affection for her subjects."
The book is available for pre-order now from Tangent Books and there is also a limited edition of 30 numbered and signed copies into which Tania will hand-write a new and unpublished story.
Further praise for My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions:
"Funny, fresh, lyrical. These stories are like colorful glass lozenges holding the substance of our everyday lives, sparkled up by the unusual and wondrous." Aimee Bender, author of Willful Creatures and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Tania Hershman writes with such passion and playfulness, the pain and the fear and the hope woven through her stories hits all the harder. The result is beautiful, funny and quietly devastating." Nicola Walker, actress (Spooks, Inside Men)
"Tania Hershman makes immaculate tiny stories that punch ten times heavier than their weight, as if a 500 page novel had been ground up and distilled into capsule form. They are so biting and so perfect they seem to hang in the air for moments after you’ve finished reading them, like little prayers. Emotionally wrenching, funny, quirky, and full of condensed wisdom, insight and love, Hershman’s short short stories are whirring, ticking word machines waiting to explode inside you." David Gaffney, author of Sawn-Off Tales, Aromabingo, and The Half Life of Songs
"The writer Alasdair Gray once described himself as “a maker of imagined objects.” It strikes me that Tania Hershman needs a more artful descriptor than ‘writer,’ too: brilliant; mysterious; not of this earth—I adore her and I adore this book." Marjorie Celona, author of Y
"Simply superb, and anything but simple, these fictions peel back the layers we build up over our lives with the sharpest of scalpels: the eye of that rare creature - a real writer." Vanessa Gebbie, author of Words From a Glass Bubble, Storm Warning, and The Coward's Tale
