Bone by Bone: Stories - Hardcover

Gary Michael Krist (born 1957) is an American writer of fiction, nonfiction, travel journalism, and literary criticism. Before turning to narrative nonfiction with The White Cascade (2007), a book about the 1910 Wellington avalanche, Krist wrote three novels--Bad Chemistry (1998), Chaos Theory (2000), and Extravagance (2002). He has also written two short story collections--The Garden State (1988) and Bone by Bone (1994).

He has been a frequent book reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Washington Post Book World. His satire pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Outlook section, and Newsday, and his stories, articles, and travel pieces have been featured in National Geographic Traveler, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Playboy, The New Republic, Esquire, and on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts." His short stories have also been anthologized in such collections as Men Seeking Women, Writers' Harvest 2, and Best American Mystery Stories.

He has been the recipient of The Stephen Crane Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Travel Journalism, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Krist is a graduate of Princeton University. In 1979-80, he studied literature at the Universitaet Konstanz (Germany) on a Fulbright Scholarship. The author has been profiled in The New York Times Book Review (November 6, 1988) and the Style section of The Washington Post (February 25, 2007).

Krist lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife and daughter.

 Works

• Novels and Story Collections
  • The Garden State (1988)
  • Bone by Bone (1994)
  • Bad Chemistry (1998)
  • Chaos Theory (2000)
  • Extravagance (2002)

• Nonfiction
  • The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche (2007)

Probing the quiet depths of suburban desperation, Krist ( The Garden State ) extends the lessons of Cheever and Updike while steering his second short-story collection in some decidedly odd directions. The author has a knack for creating characters who teeter between the ordinary and the ridiculous, and he is at his best when combining humor or empathy with a conventional situation turned sideways or upside down. "Ever Alice," the tale of a casual lover who turns out to be a near-femme fatale, opens with the delightful teaser, "The first thing she ever did to me was ruin Emily Dickinson." "Hungry," set in Westchester, relates the adventures of Frank, an assistant embalmer who decides to move to Hungry, Alaska, and finds half the residents of his town eager to come along for the ride. On the more serious side, "Baggage" conveys the anguish of a man who decides to leave a relationship as his lover faces the steady decline caused by her cerebral palsy. Lesser entries are emotionally effective but have plots that lean toward stereotype. "Eclipse" captures the chagrin of a newly divorced man who's about to be displaced, while the three "Erickson Stories" confront the decline and fall of a marriage. Krist is a promising talent, a banner carrier for the long-awaited renaissance of the short story.
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