“In precise, beautifully-rendered language, Tina May Hall subtly sketches the ups and downs of a woman trying to get pregnant and the way her life is impacted by the flutter of the world and the rhythm of life: internet poker, minor infidelity, fights over mail-order seedlings, hurricanes, and a series of mysterious ×s appearing on her house. Honest, unflinching, and very human, All the Day’s Sad Stories is an impressive and worthy debut.”

Brian Evenson, author of Last Days

“The turning of the seasons, the failure of a pregnancy, a marriage rattled by frail income and shabby infidelity—All the Day’s Sad Stories strings minute episodes into a bead necklace of a novella. I sat down to read a few pages, and before I knew it, I had finished the whole thing, never having moved out of my chair. The delicate, fragmentary narrative nevertheless heaves the weight of an entire troubled year.”

Angela Woodward, author of The Human Mind

“All the Day’s Sad Stories is a masterwork in miniature, a beautifully chiseled book of vignettes that blurs the line between the prose poem and the short story while managing to produce an arc of feeling that most novels lack. Tina May Hall is, at heart, a lyric poet of mood and image who realizes that each sentence is an acoustical event. Take this book into a quiet place, because even the spaces between words make the most exquisite of sounds.”

Peter Markus, author of Bob, or Man on Boat

All the Day’s Sad Stories was the winning manuscript in the 2009 Caketrain Chapbook Competition, as judged by Brian Evenson.

About the Author

Tina May Hall teaches English and Creative Writing at Hamilton College in upstate New York. Her fiction collection The Physics of Imaginary Objects, was released in 2010.

Acknowledgments

Cover image “Portrait of Holly Throsby” © 2008 Mel Stringer. Used by permission. Text © 2009 Tina May Hall.