Big Dark Hole & Other Stories by Jeffrey Ford

Trade paperback format. 

A new collection from the award winning author of A Natural History of Hell.

A Jeffrey Ford story may start out in the innocuous and routine world of college teaching or evenings on a porch with your wife. But inevitably the weird comes crashing in. Maybe it’s an unexpected light in a dark and uninhabited house, maybe it’s a drainage tunnel that some poor kid is suddenly compelled to explore. Maybe there’s a monkey in the woods or an angel that you’ll need to fight if you want to gain tenure. Big Dark Hole is about those big, dark holes that we find ourselves once in a while and maybe, too, the big dark holes that exist inside of us.

“Nobody else can quite make the short story form frolic the way Ford can. Equally at home exploring a slightly eerie Midwest or the out-and-out odd, his writing is often deeply weird, never arbitrary, and always profoundly satisfying. Whether he’s writing about a hive mind of fleas, the local monster, bookshelf fairies, an odd mountain hotel, or a professor named Jeff who has to wrestle an angel if he’s to keep his job, Big Dark Hole offers Ford at his outlandish best.”
— Brian Evenson, Song for the Unraveling of the World