““Though the situations are outrageous, the characters seem utterly rational; Fraterrigo, an Evergreen Park native, has a real gift for blending the fanciful with the mundane.” ”
Purchase The Longest Pregnancy
The Longest Pregnancy
Written by Melissa Fraterrigo | 2006
Published by Livingstone Press
This collection of fourteen short stories explore marriage, family, infatuation and celebrity, friendship and heartache. Many of the characters in The Longest Pregnancy are plagued by some unique problem from a newlywed couple that wakes to find they've grown attached overnight to a family that swims with sharks and a woman who has been pregnant for more than seven years. And while the conditions these characters are sidled with may be unique, their approaches are fresh and unsettling in the best of ways.
praise for The Longest Pregnancy by Melissa Fraterrigo
"A bouquet of finely carved and crafted tales often about women who are powerful in odd, extraordinary ways--each story is a new and bright adventure." -Aimee Bender, author of Willful Creatures, Girl in the Flammable Skirt, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Fraterrigo is able to intricately entangle the elements of the surreal with the very real life of her characters."-Charles Yu, Mid-American Review
"With all the innovation of the best surrealism, and the memorable, conflicted characters of gritty realism, THE LONGEST PREGNANCY is that rare book that defies categorization and genre, and instead takes the reader on a journey full of beautiful surprises. Melissa Fraterrigo is a compelling, fresh new voice who can, in the same instant, blow your mind and break your heart. A truly unique collection"-Gina Frangello, author of My Sister's Continent and Blow Your House Down.
"Stories in Melissa Fraterrigo's prize-winning collection are bold, thoroughly entertaining fictions about people whose ever-expanding desires, dreams--or nightmares--come true, fictions about when life is suddenly lived large. . . . These stories glimmer with surfaces so beautiful, so hard, and so true about our times that when I finished reading I found myself scuttling for the comforts of the first gray gully of anonymity I could find." -Wendell Mayo, author of Centaur of the North, B. Horror, and In Lithuanian Wood
“To us, they will always be the family that swims with sharks. They will shuffle around with sun-bleached hair and bronze skin, rough knees and elbows from years of submersion in salty waters. They will continue to receive discounts at the Food Lion where their grandparents and great-grandparents shopped before there even was a shark show. Around town, people will recall a time when the apartments along Torrence Avenue were freshly painted and nearly every storefront displayed a tiny rubber shark.
Though it’s been years since the tourists visited our town, the red awnings that line the beach still stand. Now the boardwalk creaks in the faintest of winds and Saturday afternoons pass without interruption. We spend days at home mowing our lawns, complaining to our wives, feeling the weight of regret circle our knees.”