Mary Caponegro reads from All Fall Down (Coffee House Press, 2009)

Mary Caponegro’s experimental fiction blurs the line between fantasy and reality. In these stories of love and healing gone awry, we visit Rome and a marriage therapy retreat, encounter orphans performing abortions in their playroom, witness a mother’s impotence in the face of the 9/11 attacks, meet a man buckling under the pressures of caregiving, and observe couples on the brink of dissolution. All of the characters are heading toward “ninety mile-an-hour psychic crashes euphemistically referred to as epiphanies.” The tragicomedies of failure, resilience, and transformation are rendered with exuberant lyricism, striking characterization, and elaborately detailed settings.