Maxine Rosaler – författare

Award-winning author Maxine Rosaler brings wit, heart, and striking originality to literary fiction, offering a poignant exploration of city life and human connection in this timeless short story collectionSet against the vibrant and gritty backdrop of 1970s and 1980s New York City, The Missing Kidney and Other Stories brings to life a kaleidoscope of human experiences with humor, heartbreak, and humanity on every page. This engrossing collection of short stories captures the enchantment in the mundane, exploring how meaning can unexpectedly emerge from everyday moments.From a girl’s desperate attempt to save the boy she loves from his fixation on his uncle, to a social justice champion rationalizing an imperfect partnership, to a man kneeling by a memorial for his lost love on the busy city sidewalks, Rosaler’s stories spotlight the tangled beauty of human connection and the hidden magic in life’s imperfections.In this true love letter to NYC, the city’s streets, sounds, and characters come alive, capturing the nostalgic charm of life before the digital age. With sharp, original prose, Rosaler turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, dealing out the fates of a vivid array of complex individuals with unflagging energy, wit and a delight in the details of city life–leaving readers engrossed, reflective, deeply moved, and reminded of what it truly means to be human.

Set in the vanished world of the New York City of the 1970s and ‘80s, these stories convey a sense of the enchantment that lurks on the flip side of every moment, as if the meaning of life were hidden within the static being blasted out of the loudspeakers on a subway platform, or a scrap of newspaper preserved under ice on a cold winter’s day.A girl tries to save the boy she loves from his crippling love for his uncle. A champion of social justice talks herself into believing that the man she finds sexually repulsive is a perfect fit for her perfectly ordered life. A man kneels on the sidewalk before a memorial he constructed for his girlfriend as a crowd of curious onlookers gather around him. Rosaler deals out the fates of a vivid array of complex characters with unflagging energy, wit and a delight in the details of city life.

We know by page one of Queen for a Day that Mimi Slavitt’s three-year-old son is autistic, but if we told her, she wouldn’t listen, because she doesn’t want to know—until at last Danny’s behavior becomes so strange even she can’t ignore it. After her son’s diagnosis Mimi finds herself in a world nearly as isolating as her son’s. It is a world she shares only with mothers like herself, women chosen against their will for lives of sacrifice and martyrdom. Searching for miracles, begging for the help of heartless bureaucracies while arranging every minute of every day for children who can never be left alone, they exist in a state of perpetual crisis, normal life always just out of reach. In chapters told from Mimi’s point of view and theirs, we meet these women, each a conflicted, complex character totally unsuited for sainthood and dreaming of the day she can just walk away. Taking its title from the 1950s reality TV show in which the contestants, housewives living lives filled with pain and suffering, competed with each other for deluxe refrigerators and sets of stainless steel silverware, Queen for a Day portrays a group of imperfect women living under enormous pressure. Rosaler tells their story in ironic, precise and vivid prose, with dark humor and insight born of first-hand experience.