{"product_id":"learning-to-hit-my-mother-stories-of-calamity-9798896361763","title":"Learning to Hit My Mother: Stories of Calamity","description":"\u003cb\u003eFor fans of Cormac McCarthy, a novel-in-stories that chronicles, with compelling accuracy and violence and through shape-shifting prose and rococo, one girl's passage from childhood to motherhood in a small midwestern town.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA clear-eyed and necessary account of how violence insinuates itself into characters living liminal lives in the purgatorial world of Ontario, Illinois, \u003ci\u003eLearning to Hit My\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eMother \u003c\/i\u003eis a collection of connected stories that all possess a unity of place--and characters so compellingly human that they promise, with an almost unflappable certainty, to possess the reader. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePit, a girl at the onset, is savaged by her mother, who goes at her with her hands, heart, and even a baseball bat because her husband--Pit's father--has had her. This demented triangulation forms Pit. Throughout her life she is drawn to misfits--like her friend Bean, who ultimately steps in front of a train. From these inauspicious beginnings ensues a whole delectable slew of stories; stories full of meaty, fragmented souls--Lou, Edgar, Twink, Leesa, and Pit's son, Sam; stories whose quiet intensity will capture fans of Sherwood Anderson and Clarice Lispector. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eChampioned by language that is jarringly precise, \u003ci\u003eLearning to Hit My Mother\u003c\/i\u003e soars in its visceral portrait of the monstrous as located in what might be called the sublimity of the ordinary. Haunting, unputdownable, and gripping, each story galvanizes with thought- provoking prose that hits each and every cell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e She Writes Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/20\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798896361763\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 216","brand":"Elizabeth Kirschner","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53024747815093,"sku":"9798896361763","price":16.14,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/9798896361763.jpg?v=1787667943","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/learning-to-hit-my-mother-stories-of-calamity-9798896361763","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}