Description
Description
From award-winning author Nora Lange comes a ransacking of the house of motherhood and matrimony. Nora Lange's debut novel, Us Fools, was praised as the "Great American Novel" by Molly Young in The New York Times, and "a razor-sharp critique of American capitalism" by Michael Schaub at NPR. Now, she turns her eye toward the daily exercise of getting by. In "Heart Beats," Carol and David arrive late to a Boston dinner party for a night of "messy socializing" with other couples, including a former cult-leader turned financial-advisor and a woman who learned of a "kinky sort of game" while riding public transit, details that she will reveal after the peach crumble. In "Island of Phaetons," an expatriate living in Istanbul is called away from her daily life with "the husband" and "the friend who wanted more than friendship" to visit her mother, who notoriously makes bad decisions, and who has just arrived in Greece "with news" for her daughter, a tantalizing invitation that has her daughter immediately on a plane. In "Dog Star," two figurines live out their dreams before succumbing to the truth that they have been assembled inside of a snow globe and will never go anywhere. In the title story, a new mother in Los Angeles navigates a job, a long-distance relationship with her husband, and her visiting mother, while hoping to find relief in daytime app sex. These stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation are at once hilarious and savage. Day Care is a biting reflection on economic precarity, love, and peeing your pants.
About the Author
About the Author
Nora Lange's debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors' Choice pick. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Her project "Dailyness" was longlisted for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC's Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Joyously perverse. A unique and unpredictable collection that elevates the fatigue of simply trying to exist at the quarter pole of the 21st century to an art form."
--Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times "Lange is a chronicler of all that is strange and secret about people, mining that strangeness for comedy and pathos... Lange, as readers of Us Fools will know, has a fondness for autodidacts and obsessives and is adept at blending esoteric references (ranging, in this story, from the Bible to contemporary art to ancient myth to Lydia Millet to the work of the Center for Land Use Interpretation) seamlessly into her own idiosyncratic worldview. The landfill, for the narrator, figures as a scapegoat for society's many sins. Lange often writes in this mode, a kind of funhouse mirror of ecofeminist criticism; her women tend to be deadpan wits in a dying world."
--Meghan Racklin, The Brooklyn Rail
"Nora Lange follows up her dazzling debut novel Us Fools with Day Care, an electric short story collection that transforms the grotesqueries of modern life into comedy. Ranging from strange to surreal to simply laugh-out-loud funny, Lange's stories offer a savage takedown on the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day. From two snow globe figurines coming to terms with the fact that they will never go anywhere to one of the most deliciously disastrous dinner parties ever put to paper, Day Care is the latest reminder that Nora Lange is an author to keep your eye on for years to come."
--Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books "Lange's well-honed stories build to stinging epiphanies. Those with a taste for acerbic wit will find much to enjoy."
--Publishers Weekly "The world of these stories is a grotesque mirror image of our own, where repressive gender roles are amplified to the point of comedy. Excellent, biting satires from a unique feminist lens."
--Kirkus Reviews "Read more than a couple of these slippery gems, and you run the risk of calling up friends and even strangers and saying, Hey, don't hang up--listen to this...!"
--Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Same Bed, Different Dreams
"Lange's prose is smart and surprising, invigoratingly icy and delicious."
--Joy Williams, author of Concerning the Future of Souls "In these stories that are insightful, deliciously weird, and often laugh-out-loud funny, Lange reminds us that life, real life, is a kind of delirium. Day Care has made me greedy; now I want to see more of the world, more of our beautiful batshit existence, through Nora Lange's lens."
--Maggie Smith, bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful "Lange is unwilling, uninterested, and unsympathetic to storytelling that traffics in the maudlin, mundane, or murky. The stories of Day Care are brutal, hilarious, and relentless; they are pedal to the metal, which is to say: divine and not a little bit insane."
--Hannah Pittard, author of If You Love It, Let It Kill You "Nora Lange writes with the precision of Joy Williams, and the heart of George Saunders, in a voice that is all her own."
--Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles
"The stories in Day Care are delicious paradoxes--found moments from daily life that have been extracted, exalted, and merged with the uncanny. In exquisite, highly-original prose, Nora Lange writes from the lonely heart of the modern world, where characters must behave erratically, dangerously, even badly, if they are to feel anything at all."
--Kevin Maloney, author of Horse Girl Fever and The Red-Headed Pilgrim "Nora Lange's storytelling will force you to embrace the awkwardness that is the human experience. Day Care will leave readers feeling seen and emotionally exhausted while reflecting on what we do to just survive the day."
--Jenny Gilroy, E. Shaver Booksellers (Savannah, GA) "This collection of stories is raw, funny, surprising, and at turns, both real and surreal. Nora Lange explores woman and motherhood through daily minutia, reveals its absurdities, and exposes how often life leaves us frustrated and unsatisfied; how we're mostly just getting through it as best we can."
--Alana Haley, Schuler Books (Grand Rapids, MI) "In the short story collection Day Care we meet couples, parents, and their children all seen through Nora Lange's satirical and witty look at life. Day Care is a triumph and further cements Nora Lange as one of my favorite writers!"
--Caitlin Luce Baker, Island Books (Mercer Island, WA) "A short story collection so compelling and lived-in that I devoured it in a matter of hours. On my second re-read, and it hasn't lost any of its power."
--Mick Kowaleski, Skylight Books (LA, CA)
--Jim Ruland, Los Angeles Times "Lange is a chronicler of all that is strange and secret about people, mining that strangeness for comedy and pathos... Lange, as readers of Us Fools will know, has a fondness for autodidacts and obsessives and is adept at blending esoteric references (ranging, in this story, from the Bible to contemporary art to ancient myth to Lydia Millet to the work of the Center for Land Use Interpretation) seamlessly into her own idiosyncratic worldview. The landfill, for the narrator, figures as a scapegoat for society's many sins. Lange often writes in this mode, a kind of funhouse mirror of ecofeminist criticism; her women tend to be deadpan wits in a dying world."
--Meghan Racklin, The Brooklyn Rail
"Nora Lange follows up her dazzling debut novel Us Fools with Day Care, an electric short story collection that transforms the grotesqueries of modern life into comedy. Ranging from strange to surreal to simply laugh-out-loud funny, Lange's stories offer a savage takedown on the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day. From two snow globe figurines coming to terms with the fact that they will never go anywhere to one of the most deliciously disastrous dinner parties ever put to paper, Day Care is the latest reminder that Nora Lange is an author to keep your eye on for years to come."
--Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books "Lange's well-honed stories build to stinging epiphanies. Those with a taste for acerbic wit will find much to enjoy."
--Publishers Weekly "The world of these stories is a grotesque mirror image of our own, where repressive gender roles are amplified to the point of comedy. Excellent, biting satires from a unique feminist lens."
--Kirkus Reviews "Read more than a couple of these slippery gems, and you run the risk of calling up friends and even strangers and saying, Hey, don't hang up--listen to this...!"
--Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Same Bed, Different Dreams
"Lange's prose is smart and surprising, invigoratingly icy and delicious."
--Joy Williams, author of Concerning the Future of Souls "In these stories that are insightful, deliciously weird, and often laugh-out-loud funny, Lange reminds us that life, real life, is a kind of delirium. Day Care has made me greedy; now I want to see more of the world, more of our beautiful batshit existence, through Nora Lange's lens."
--Maggie Smith, bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful "Lange is unwilling, uninterested, and unsympathetic to storytelling that traffics in the maudlin, mundane, or murky. The stories of Day Care are brutal, hilarious, and relentless; they are pedal to the metal, which is to say: divine and not a little bit insane."
--Hannah Pittard, author of If You Love It, Let It Kill You "Nora Lange writes with the precision of Joy Williams, and the heart of George Saunders, in a voice that is all her own."
--Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles
"The stories in Day Care are delicious paradoxes--found moments from daily life that have been extracted, exalted, and merged with the uncanny. In exquisite, highly-original prose, Nora Lange writes from the lonely heart of the modern world, where characters must behave erratically, dangerously, even badly, if they are to feel anything at all."
--Kevin Maloney, author of Horse Girl Fever and The Red-Headed Pilgrim "Nora Lange's storytelling will force you to embrace the awkwardness that is the human experience. Day Care will leave readers feeling seen and emotionally exhausted while reflecting on what we do to just survive the day."
--Jenny Gilroy, E. Shaver Booksellers (Savannah, GA) "This collection of stories is raw, funny, surprising, and at turns, both real and surreal. Nora Lange explores woman and motherhood through daily minutia, reveals its absurdities, and exposes how often life leaves us frustrated and unsatisfied; how we're mostly just getting through it as best we can."
--Alana Haley, Schuler Books (Grand Rapids, MI) "In the short story collection Day Care we meet couples, parents, and their children all seen through Nora Lange's satirical and witty look at life. Day Care is a triumph and further cements Nora Lange as one of my favorite writers!"
--Caitlin Luce Baker, Island Books (Mercer Island, WA) "A short story collection so compelling and lived-in that I devoured it in a matter of hours. On my second re-read, and it hasn't lost any of its power."
--Mick Kowaleski, Skylight Books (LA, CA)
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Two Dollar Radio
Pub date:
2026-04-07
Length:
216 pages
The Allstora Membership
Membership Perks:
- Save 30% on all online store purchases
- Exclusive access to author's content
- You pay less, but authors still earn double
Membership Terms:
First Month:
$0.00
Monthly price:
$5.00
- To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
- One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.