Fresh Complaint

What was it about complaining that felt so good? You and your fellow sufferer emerging from a thorough session as if from a spa bath, refreshed and tingling?

The first-ever collection of short stories from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies.

We meet Kendall, a failed poet who, envious of other people's wealth during the real estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; and Mitchell, a lovelorn liberal arts graduate on a search for enlightenment; and Prakrti, a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her family leads to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged academic.

Jeffrey Eugenides's bestselling novels [*Middlesex*](/book/middlesex/jeffrey-eugenides/9780007528646), [*The Virgin Suicides*](/book/the-virgin-suicides/jeffrey-eugenides/9780007524303) and [*The Marriage Plot*](/book/the-marriage-plot/jeffrey-eugenides/9780007441303) have shown him to be an astute observer of the crises of adolescence, self-discovery and family love.

These stories, from one of our greatest authors, explore equally rich and intriguing territory. Narratively compelling and beautifully written, *Fresh Complaint* shows all of Eugenides's trademark humour, compassion and complex understanding of what it is to be human.