The Lousy Adult

by William J. Cobb

In The Lousy Adult, William J. Cobb reveals a world where love and respect collide with achievement and desire, a world where people often get what they want, yet must pay the price of alienation, remorse, and retribution in order to obtain it.

In "The Sea Horse," a teenage boy defends a battered woman against her abusive husband while he deals with the loss of his own parents. In "Warsaw, 1984," a young man travels through Europe and ends up in a relationship in a country he can’t understand. The Lousy Adult presents ten short stories about defrocked priests, guilty electricians, hardened mothers, and other colorful characters who portray the complexity of the human race.

Praise for William J. Cobb's The Fire Eaters

"Cobb's short stories, printed in the New Yorker and other magazines, hinted at the power he displays in this beautifully controlled and convincing debut, winner of the 1992 Associated Writing Programs award for the novel."— Publisher's Weekly

216 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2013

About the author

William J. Cobb is a novelist, essayist, and short fiction writer whose work has been published in The New Yorker, The Mississippi Review, The Antioch Review, and many others. He's the author of two novels - The Fire Eaters (W.W. Norton 1994) and Goodnight, Texas (Unbridled Books 2006) - and a book of stories, The White Tattoo (Ohio State UP 2002). He reviews books for the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, and the New York Times, and directs the MFA program at Penn State. He lives in Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Reviews

[Yu-Han Chao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of our worst nightmares come to life in these stories, which explore human nature and potential in troubling yet fascinating ways. Enjoying these stories as much as one does feels like a guilty pleasure, and there are plenty of witty, quotable lines:"The Light at the End of the Tunnel is an Oncoming Train" is one such gem. The sad thing is, while the characters in this book are "lousy," they are probably closer to the true core of humanity than one cares to admit.