Coup de Foudre - Tapa blanda

Spectacular . . . Presents a moving exploration of the ambiguous nature of reality, storytelling, and the passage of time. (New York Times Book Review)

[Coup de Foudre] showcases a dazzling versatility of style and imagination . . . devotees and newcomers alike will be richly rewarded by the author's impressive display here of rhetorical inventiveness and ingenious ideas. (Booklist)

Can you call a Guggenheim Fellow and a National Book Award Finalist unheralded? Maybe not, but underheralded Ken Kalfus most certainly is. With Coup de Foudre, he's written as varied and exciting a collection as any you're likely to find, a wild array of stories and novellas made whole by the artfulness of his prose, the bravery of his tactics, and the empathy and honesty of his gaze. (Kevin Brockmeier, author of THE ILLUMINATION)

Ken Kalfus keeps you teetering between 'this is weird' and 'exactly right!' The strange worlds he brilliantly creates are oddly familiar and make you laugh and think and hope for more. He is an original with the gift of getting inside people. (Mark Kurlansky, author of CITY BEASTS)

Ken Kalfus' exuberant fictions about scamps, fumblers, and modern day rogues comes as a relief--so THIS is how they think. Kalfus cracks the human personality code with Coup de Foudre. Yet another of the author's literary accomplishments, chock full of clear-eyed portraits in an entertaining and experimental vein. (Amity Gaige, author of SCHRODER)

It is impossible to stay detached from a Ken Kalfus story. No matter how unsettling their predicaments, the characters in this striking collection are rendered so fully and precisely that we can feel the force of their desires and understand their panic and confusion. Whether the subject is sexual assault, an eerie curse cast on a community, the act of reading, or even gingivitis, these fictions are infused with the force of lived experience. (Joanna Scott, author of DE POTTER'S GRAND TOUR)

Ken Kalfus's story, Coup de Foudre, is a brilliant fictional account of the incident [in which Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid], framed as a cringe-making letter of apology. (The Globe and Mail)

In the title novella, Kalfus, a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, riffs entertainingly on the outlaw sexual proclivities of a financial titan reminiscent of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. (The Forward, "12 Books We’re Looking Forward to in 2015")

Provocative explorations into contemporary culture. (BookReporter.com)

[A] portrait of wild energy . . . Excellent . . . Any serious reader . . . should be excited to read the work of a writer with Kalfus' talent . . . Read Coupe de Foudre to see firsthand why his writing is so highly regarded. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)