What Doesn't Kill You Opens Your Heart

The characters in Max Hipp's debut story collection howl with loneliness. They've reached the ends of their coping mechanisms and bank accounts and are making terrible life choices and trying to recover in the wake of them. We've got folks who can't let go of the past, folks obsessed with sex and music, lovers stuck in dismal relationships, and clueless romantics who probably need their asses whipped. Heartbreak piles up like car crashes in the fog, and everybody just has to carry on like everything's fine. These stories keep hitting the funny/sad notes, and with his scalpel-tip sentences, Hipp marches readers through the wringer, with great compassion for the lost and searching.