A Better Class of People

Description

A brilliant novel-in-stories from award-winning author Robert Lopez In an uncanny, distorted version of New York City, a man rides the subway through the chaos of an ordinary commute. He may have a gun in his pocket. He may be looking for someone-a woman named Esperanza. Between stops, we shuttle back and forth through time and see a man who stands in traffic, the same man seizing and shuddering on a sidewalk, an institution where the man is housed with other undesirables (or troublemakers?), a neighborhood where all the residents have forgotten their names. Over everything looms the specter of a nameless menace, a pervasive sense that something-more than just a ride-is coming to an end. With Robert Lopez's signature innovation, A Better Class of People delivers a network of stories interconnected and careening like subway tunnels through the realities of modern America: immigration, gun violence, police brutality, sexual harassment, climate change, and the point of fracture at which we find ourselves, where reality and perception are indistinguishable.

Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River-named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction-Latino. He teaches at Pratt Institute and Stony Brook University. He was a fellow in fiction for the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2010 and Visiting Writer at Syracuse University for fall, 2018. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

"Lopez has the ability to give readers whiplash with his unconventional and bewitching stories." -LA Times "Lopez takes a look inside, messy guts, beating heart and all. A rawly observed universe peopled with voices of stirring honesty and wild loop-de-loops. Funny, brutal, brilliant." -Samantha Hunt "Robert Lopez is one of the most exciting writers working today and these linked stories are an excellent introduction to his blazingly original intelligence and wit." -Jenny Offill "Robert Lopez's A Better Class of People bowled me over. These stories are taut, intense, mysterious, and they echo off each other in totally unexpected ways -- and to boot -- the collection is an honest, funny, and brutal homage to New York City." -Peter Orner