Bugsy  Other Stories, Rafael Frumkin
Bugsy  Other Stories, Rafael Frumkin
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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Bugsy & Other Stories

Author: Rafael Frumkin

Narrator: Michael Crouch, Lindsey Dorcus, Graham Halstead, Sarah Beth Pfeifer, Jackie Sanders

Unabridged: 8 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/13/2024


Synopsis

Longlisted for the 2024 Story Prize

From the author of Confidence and The Comedown comes a wildly imaginative story collection about queerness, neurodivergence, sexuality, and self-discovery.

Frumkin’s latest book is a deliciously entertaining collection of five genre-defying stories that range from downright hilarious to brilliantly unhinged. Taken together, they celebrate a wide variety of human experiences.

In the title story, a queer young adult with bipolar disorder drops out of college in a fog of depression, aimlessly drifting between maintaining their job at a fast food restaurant and dodging their mom’s texts. But when they fall in with a group of sex workers starring in BDSM films, they find radical freedom, love, and community. In other stories, we meet a psychiatrist whose meticulously-maintained life is upended by an Alex Trebek-like voice in his head, an e-girl celebrity who is being courted by a delusional fan, a young boy on the spectrum at odds with a neurotypical world determined to “cure” him, and an elderly woman whose consciousness is being transformed by her oncoming death.

With incredible insight, compassion, and honesty, Frumkin unravels each story with tantalizing precision. Sexy and raw—and compulsively readable—this collection offers a look at our innermost selves as we all try to make sense of the world and our place in it.

About Rafael Frumkin

Rafael Frumkin is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Medill School of Journalism. Her first novel, The Comedown, was published by Henry Holt in 2018, and her second novel, Confidence, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2023. She lives with her partner, two cats, and one dog in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Porshai

I want to be a short story collection girly but I am not. That is no fault of the author, but I did struggle a little to finish this. I really enjoyed the first two stories..The honesty around sex work and mental health was great. I specifically found the second story to be very unique. A mental hea......more

Goodreads review by Angel

"Bugsy & Other Stories” is a collection of short stories that are supposed to be genre-defying and celebratory of taboos. Personally, this collection lacked sustenance. The stories were all good, but none were memorable. I enjoyed the first two stories the most and then they just steadily lost steam......more

Goodreads review by Finneus

Ridiculously grateful to have gotten my hands on an ARC of these pieces. These stories are fresh, they go places many are afraid to even entertain going to--or putting into the google search history lol. As a queer and trans autistic human, I wish I could give this ten stars. I'm happy Frumkin is on......more