Are We Not Men ? - Hardcover

The characters in these edgy, slick stories are all suffering from identity crises or illusions of one sort or another, like the convict in "Babyman" whose girlfriend convinces him, falsely, that she's pregnant in order to con him out of his meager savings and who finds that he can't give up the idea of his imaginary child. Or the B-movie fan for whom the viewing of "Island of Lost Souls" (the 1932 horror classic in which the beast-men of the mad surgeon's laboratory chant "Are we not men?") provides the defining moment of his otherwise dreary existence. Hovering between comedy and despair, Spencer creates characters on the edge of finding bliss--or losing it completely.

Brent Spencer is the author of The Lost Son, a novel, and Are We Not Men?, a collection of short fiction chosen as one of the best books of the year by the The Village Voice. His work has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Missouri Review, Epoch, and elsewhere. He writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and screenplays, and teaches creative writing at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.