Things I Want Back From You

Elizabeth Stix’s voice is dazzling – rueful, lyrical, incisive, and funny as hell. Think of Lorrie Moore, Deborah Eisenberg, or perhaps most of all the late great Laurie Colwin. The stories here don’t so much link as they fizz, in a cocktail of sweet hope and loss.
—Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel

Funny and poignant, this collection will resonate with any reader who has felt trapped by something inexplicable, what Stix calls “the fishbowl of our circumstance.” She takes on love, alienation, betrayal, and recriminations with wit and wisdom, and a generosity of spirit. Her tight cast of characters is frequently smothered by longing, doubt, and sometimes each other in a California landscape that shimmers with possibilities just out of reach. Elizabeth Stix is a true bard of modern life.
—Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of The Bullet Swallower and Mona at Sea

Elizabeth Stix’s Things I Want Back From You is charming and inventive. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the interlinked collection of stories—set in and around the Bay Area suburb of San Encanto—features achingly alive characters who yearn for connection. An enchanting debut.
—Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

With sharpness and ease, Elizabeth Stix shows us how the short story, above all literary forms, can deliver an explosion of meaning and feeling. Neighbors, co-workers, families and friends mess up and carry on in stories of poignancy and humor that disturb and delight. An affirmation of the absurdity of life and the steadying power of love.
—Kathryn Ma, author of The Chinese Groove

Stix’s offbeat debut collection…credibly portrays the indignities of modern life.
-Publishers Weekly