You and Me, Belonging

by Aaron Kreuter

In  You and Me, Belonging , Aaron Kreuter explores our contemporary world with insight, originality, and empathy. The stories in this debut collection are brimming with characters striving to fit in, to find their place in the world, to belong. A Jewish waitress has an affair with a Palestinian chef. A one-percenter self-destructs when he becomes obsessed with mastering the guitar. A university student stoned in Amsterdam hallucinates about Anne Frank on Birthright Israel. In the closing novella, a vanful of young women follows a fictional jam band across America, steeping in counterculture, music, and the ups and downs of the road. The collection is satiric and emotional, angry and hopeful, passionate and surprising. Like a wedding speech gone off the rails, like the best improvised music, You and Me, Belonging takes readers to some unexpected places.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[Jim Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent debut collection of contemporary short stories.

[Tyler Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short fiction starts off with a bang (quite literally) and never lets you down, rising and falling in rhythm with the musical-ethical-comical-sexual encounters that unfold. It captures the deeply political implications of our most common everyday experience, and presents it in lucid detail. It is poetic without being obtuse, confrontational without being acerbic, sharp, funny, yet earnest.

The novella was the highlight for me. It contains a pseudo-soundtrack of musical references that you can listen to while reading, producing an immersive reading experience you will not soon forget. This book is a trip, in every sense of the word, and definitely worth the price of admission.

Buy the book, take the ride!

[Catriona Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Friendships as intimate and troubled as any romance. Redwoods rising around orange tents or budding in skull white pots in messy Toronto apartments. Weed. More weed. In rhythmic, hypnotic prose, these stories navigate the spiritual and moral crises of young and not-so-young people as they try to find a place—a job, a cause, a riff—where they belong. Highly recommended!

[Steven Gripp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Franzen meets Roth short story collection. Talks about going to Amsterdam and touring to see Phish but in an intellectual-style prose. Very enjoyable.