WHOSE WORLD IS THIS? (2007)

Winner of the 2007 Iowa Prize for Short Fiction.

Montgomery's characters abuse drugs and boys, advise friends who are dying of AIDS about pennies in penny loafers, write letters to Caroline Kennedy, and fall in love with movie stars. Some lose themselves to ambivalence while contemplating motherhood; others find themselves soothed when, after hearing of the sudden death of a dear friend they seduce a stranger.

In the story "We Americans," a woman abandoned by her husband grows so vulnerable, she internalizes TV news tragedies by developing hives in the shapes of foreign countries. In the title story, Hannah, a speed freak working the graveyard shift in a nursing home, falls in love with a quadriplegic who void of feelings in his limbs, feel things she cannot. In "Avalanche", an editor to movie stars in Beverly Hills struggles with how to reconcile her own story with the fairy-tale endings of celebrity culture.

Tender, poignant, and at times hilarious, the women in Whose World Is This? turn common notions of love, compassion, and tradition upside down as they show us how vulnerability, although dangerous, is what makes life astonishingly beautiful and reality strangely unreal.

"Montgomery is a realist with a talent for stringing together perfectly captured moments such as this, evoking Lori Moore or Antonya Nelson with a skillful balance of the beautiful and the grotesque, graced with glints of humor. Though her morose introspection can overwhelm, Montgomery more than makes up for a lack of cheer or action through her characters' lived-in authenticity. A quick, inspired read, this collection bodes well for Montgomery's future in fiction."—Publishers Weekly

"Montgomery's women characters—quirky, resilient, and memorable—float through life separated from men, possessions, families, or fear, caught on the page at unexpected moments of freedom or release... Infused with smart takes on American pop culture, this compact collection of short stories is densely lyrical and often funny. The opening epigraph, from Emily Post, does, indeed, offer a key to Montgomery's characters: "It's only the unknown that shakes your poise.""—Booklist

Rights: University of Iowa Press, World

THE THINGS BETWEEN US (2006)

A moving, bitingly funny chronicle of a New England family on the brink, this is the personal story of three adult children, fractured by their mother’s alcoholism, returning to their childhood home to help their father in a medical emergency. There they find themselves faced with the family dynamic: Their mother is drunk (again), and their father, the rock of the family, is doing the impossible: Dying. The memoir explores the complexities of alcoholism, family relationships, and how from the depths of sadness that surrounds dying, the resilience of the human spirit is found through forgiveness, humor, and love.
 

"Of the demons afflicting the well-heeled Montgomery family, the most obvious is cancer, ravaging the body of the author's beloved father. Equally insidious is alcohol: even at age seventy-eight [Montgomery's mother] begins the day with a cocktail. But the evil the author seems most interested in exorcising in this wrenching, unsentimental memoir is denial, the organizing principal of the family's life.... Montgomery's portrait of modern death is harrowing, but it's uplifting, too."—People 

"A stunning addition to the literature of drunken mothers. Montgomery has a lovely, straightforward, trustworthy style. You like her utter lack of self-pity. You appreciate the absence of bitterness and judgment. There's no pretense of offering some grand lesson, other than love: Love as best as you can for as long as you can. That's all."—Los Angeles Times 

"What Montgomery does, uncannily well, is to catch how normal an alcoholic family feels when you're in the midst of it. Montgomery has wrung an engrossing book from her eccentric (at best) childhood and the journey of reconnection she and her brother and sister take in the wake of their father's terminal diagnosis....Montgomery's greatest gift is to be able to describe her family clearly and unsentimentally but without cruelty. That's what allows us to laugh with the Montgomerys but certainly not to laugh at them. They're much too compelling for that." —O, The Oprah Magazine 

"Most families have a black sheep. Montgomery's had a black hole -- her mother, a frustrated performer and prodigious drunk. So imagine Montgomery's surprise when she is called home to mount a death watch -- not for her Mumzy, but for her tight-lipped father, always something of a cipher for his children. Her memoir of a belatedly dutiful daughter, harrowing and inevitably heartbreaking, also manages to be scathingly funny." —The Boston Globe 

Rights: Free Press, North American