From a commanding new voice in fiction comes a novel as perceptive as it is generous: a portrait of an American family trying to cope in our world today, a story of choices and doubts and transgressions.
The Hardings are teetering on the brink. Elson—once one of Houston’s most promising architects, who never quite lived up to expectations—is recently divorced from his wife of thirty years, Cadence. Their grown son, Richard, is still living at home: driving his mother’s minivan, working at a local coffee shop, resisting the career as a writer that beckons him. But when Chloe Harding gets kicked out of her East Coast college, for reasons she can’t explain to either her parents or her older brother, the Hardings’ lives start to unravel. Chloe returns to Houston, but the dangers set in motion back at school prove inescapable. Told with piercing insight, taut psychological suspense, and the wisdom of a true master of character, this is a novel about the vagaries of love and family, about betrayal and forgiveness, about the possibility and impossibility of coming home.
“Andrew Porter’s fiction is thoughtful, lucid, and highly controlled . . . He has the kind of voice one can accept as universal—honest and grave, with transparency as its adornment.” —Marilynne Robinson
“Luminous . . . In direct dialogue with the work of John Cheever and Raymond Carver . . . A memorable debut that honors the history of the short story form while blazing a new trajectory all its own.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“An exquisite collection . . . with hard-won grit and imagination to spare.” —Time Out New York
“These beautiful stories feel safe and menacing at the same time. In bucolic suburbs and quiet college towns, the unspeakable happens.” —The Boston Globe
“Of all the things to love about Andrew Porter’s wonderful collection, my favorite is how tenderly his characters treat one another’s failings and vulnerabilities . . . Their sensitivity is just as stirring and their subtle moments of epiphany just as poignant [as] Raymond Carver’s characters’ . . . Porter is a master storyteller, a writer who whispers rather than screams his truths. We look forward to more from such an amazing talent.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“A fantastic collection of short stories.” —Houston Chronicle
“If you are anything like me, you will read The Theory of Light and Matter with the same feeling of simple gratitude that the first readers of Richard Ford’s Rock Springs must have experienced twenty years ago: here, you will think, is a true master of the short story, a writer of honesty and plainspoken poetry who knows the human soul in all its light and shadow and harnesses every sentence to the purpose of revealing it.” —Kevin Brockmeier
“Stunning meditations on loss and remembrance . . . Porter crafts stories of disparate lives in an evocative, straightforward prose style reminiscent of Raymond Carver.” —The Daily Beast
“Porter can achieve more in a handful of pages than most writers can in a hundred . . . My favorite book of the year.” —San Antonio Express-News
“A remarkable collection . . . We end up truly moved.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“A work of unadorned beauty [that] draws immediate comparison to the stories of Raymond Carver.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Moving, original, and unforgettable, this is a must-own collection.” —The Strand
Andrew Porter is the author of the story collection The Theory of Light and Matter. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/Copernicus Fellowship, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in One Story, The Threepenny Review, and on public radio’s Selected Shorts. Currently, he teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
