Books

MEN BEHAVING BADLY: O’Leary’s new collection is a frank, unflinching follow-up to 2017’s successful DICK CHENEY SHOT ME IN THE FACE. Here O’Leary does the impossible: dive into the psyches of the most destructive men– a stalker, a Klansman, public shooters— and creates narratives that neither rationalize, nor over-empathize. Refreshingly, these stories deliver both valuable insight, and perspective-enhancing humor. Employing fiercer social commentary and broader imagination, these new stories are concerned with justice, redemption, mockery of a decaying and violent culture and the often greedy men behind it. But for every grubby and disastrous man, there’s hope in the form of the unexpected: a centenarian whose invisibility is a weapon, a retired Montana rancher, a California tomato farmer, an elderly Black woman from Brooklyn with some powerful knitting needles, two fly fishermen–even the Earth herself. While nostalgia, humor, and blunt delivery hook the reader, O’Leary is dead serious about calling out liars, the indignities of American retirement, contagious gun violence, and other social and political ills.

PRAISE FOR MEN BEHAVING BADLY:

Bristling with complex comic characters, the stories in O’Leary’s latest collection mine, with a feral brand of dark humor, many of our deepest afflictions: gun-violence, wealth disparity, mental health crises, political vacuousness, ad infinitum…This is an incriminating, daunting look in the mirror for a brand of masculinity that is “playing footsie with the grave digger.

— Chris Dombrowski, author of Body of Water

PRE-ORDER NOW: Rare Bird Books and Amazon