From the author of Transmutation comes a linked collection of speculative short fiction following a woman who navigates surreal jobs in a near-future dystopia, where people have become completely numb to their emotions following a cataclysmic event.
The Grief Shop and Other Stories from a Broken World takes place after "the tragedy" transforms everyone into unfeeling people. At the center of the book is Gemma, who must cope with attempting to feel in light of the numbness. She works a series of jobs--at a grief-infused coffee shop, a boxing gym for pain therapy, a graveyard, and more--encountering a range of eccentric characters struggling to survive in a world where grief, ecstasy, suffering, and joy are commodities for some to purchase and for others to exploit. Gemma's path is one of glimmering possibilities, ones with feelings she may not understand or accept.
The Grief Shop dares to wonder: how do we tell the story of being human when the very things that make us human have been stripped away from us?
Alex DiFrancesco is the author of Psychopomps, All City, Transmutation, Breaking the Curse, and, most recently, The Grief Shop and Other Stories From a Broken World. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Electric Literature, Tin House, Lit Hub, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. They are a 2022 winner of the Ohio Arts Council's Individual Excellence Award, as well as the first transgender award finalist in over 80 years of the Ohioana Book Awards.