25 Books You Can't Put Down

The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards by Robert Boswell

288 pages; Graywolf

Robert Boswell's stories are packed with latent emotion, like explosives about to detonate. In The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards (Graywolf), characters move through life with trepidation, as relationships fracture and past collides with present. "Time is not a river," thinks one traumatized young man. "Time is a tree. Branches, roots, limbs, the leafing. Time defoliates. Time buds. Time cracks." An unnerving, fascinating collection.