"A primer on the genealogy of loneliness...Novelistic, its theme of loss made palpable and powerful....such riches."
-- The New York Times Book Review
*****
"Refreshingly unaffected....There's a deliberate tenderness in Casey's handling of her characters."
-- Washington Post Book World
*****
"A skillful, moving collection of stories....Casey infuses her characters' bleak situations with a winning combination of emotional resonance, subtle humor, and wisdom."
-- Publishers Weekly
*****
"Casey is a sensitive and courageous chronicler....[These] absolutely soar with illuminating little details that crack everything open and reach for hope."
-- The Hartford Courant
*****
"Writing in spare prose with macabre humor and an unerring eye for detail, Casey strips souls bare for our enjoyment, laying neurosis and despair in full view."
-- Planet Magazine
*****
Two stories from Drastic, "Seaworthy" and "Dirt", were nominated for Pushcart Prizes (1997 and 2003).
William Morrow book description:
Meet the college graduate working in a whole body-donation clinic; a young woman obsessed with Benedictine monks; a middle-aged woman who becomes a stand-in talk-show guest; unlikely friends who meet in a domestic violence shelter; a young girl and the father who stole her away to escape his wife's mental illness; a graduate student from a suburban family who believes her physical connection to the world is deteriorating. Maud Casey -- author of The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book -- explores how we survive modern crises of loss and love through the lives of emotional and geographic nomads. Each flirts with madness and self-destruction while reaching toward life. These simple gestures of optimism and vitality, gorgeously rendered, make drastic an unforgettable collection.