Alumna Mary South '14 Publishes Debut Short Story Collection with FSG
Alumna Mary South '14 has published her debut collection of short stories, You Will Never Be Forgotten.
The collection, published by FSG Originals in early March, “explores how technology can both collapse our relationships from within and provide opportunities for genuine connection.”
“This incendiary debut marks the arrival of a perceptive, idiosyncratic, instantly recognizable voice in fiction—one that could only belong to Mary South.”
The collection is the first part of a two-book deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Her next book is a novel set in a future in which women begin turning into household objects, narrated by a woman observing these changes from her job at a hospice for the ultra-wealthy.
South’s stories range from that of a moderator who turns from Internet stalking her rapist to following him in real life to another about an architect gleaning questionable inspiration from her child’s birth defect.
South published the collection’s title story in The New Yorker in January. You can find a recording of South reading the story here.
Just a few weeks after publication, South’s collection has already garnered rave reviews.
“This story takes many brilliant twists and turns and culminates in an ending so surprising and inevitable Flannery O'Connor would surely approve,” wrote Kirkus Reviews of the title story.
“South’s stories explore tragedy as it flits uncomfortably between the digital and physical worlds,” wrote The Atlantic in a review. “And at a time when the hunger for in-person connection is enormous, they also double as aching reminders of forms of human coping that aren’t currently possible.”