Kerry Langan's warm and generous third short story collection, My Name Is Your Name, includes stories of women at all ages—from little girls to old women whose long lives are now only fleeting memories. A six-year old girl wanders an amusement park alone; a teenager tries to balance the loyalty and shame she feels toward her schizophrenic sister; a young woman stubbornly makes a home for herself in an insular fishing village for reasons that elude her and those around her; a newlywed touring houses with her husband doesn't see an exciting future, rather unsettling glimpses of her own mortality. Finding unsuspected reservoirs of strength and purpose, girls and women negotiate young love, their first jobs, single motherhood, the death of friends, infidelity, the illness of spouses, memories of the Holocaust, and the indignities, anguishes, and gifts of age and aging in ways that are sharp, funny, poignant, and often quirky. Langan draws us into a world in which the very young blunder but also face truths that sometimes elude adults and the middle-aged and elderly turn to their younger selves to guide them in an ambiguous, challenging present. We come away encouraged and replenished—more ready to face many of the same issues ourselves.
"Once again, short story writer Kerry Langan knocks it out of the park. Her newest collection is a kaleidoscope of beautifully rendered stories illuminating, with tremendous verisimilitude, great insight, and lyrical and precise prose, the complex nature of the female heart and mind." Janice Eidus, author of The Last Jewish Virgin and The War of the Rosens
"Kerry Langan’s collection offers a lovely new literary voice and a quiet, sharp, perceptive mind. These stories are intimate, surprising and graceful, a pleasure to read." Roxana Robinson, author of Sparta, Cost, and A Perfect Stranger & Other Stories
"Kerry Langan's My Name is Your Name, an impressive and readable collection, is a sort of primer on the ages of women. Her female protagonists take on issues and problems that are familiar to us, struggling with identity, finding autonomy, dealing with and fighting against expectations in a wonderfully detailed world, where desire and choice are fraught with consequence. This suspension between the ordinary and the arrival of the unexpected permeates the collection, highlighting the darkness behind the bright scrim of daily life." Mary Grimm, author of Left to Themselves and Stealing Time
Kerry Langan is the author of two earlier books of short stories, Only Beautiful & Other Stories and Live Your Life & Other Stories. Her short fiction had appeared in more than forty literary journals published in the United States, Canada, and Asia. She was also a co-editor of the Wising Up anthologies Shifting Balance Sheets: Women's Stories of Naturalized Citizenship & Cultural Attachment, Creativity & Constraint, and Siblings: Our First Macrocosm.
