A Longing for Impossible Things

"There is a good deal of failure and despair, misfortune, sickness and death. But Borofka is no cynic. The stories are often wonderfully funny."

"Short story lovers can rejoice in this much-awaited collection, A Longing for Impossible Things, from the Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning David Borofka, a master of the form. Regardless of the failings of his narrators and assorted ne'er do well characters, these tales are told in a generous, recognizably human voice, marking Borofka as a writer in whose company you'll find deep pleasure."

"Let me say this bluntly: David Borofka is one of the best short story writers this country has ever seen, a latter-day John Cheever whose prose is never less than gold, whose wit and compassion never fail his characters or his readers. I hope and pray that this book wins him all the accolades he so richly deserves. He is as fine as they come."

"David Borofka's stories bristle with lived lives; he is a writer who lets his characters talk, and they have so much to say, as does this textured and impressive collection."

"The stories in A Longing for Impossible Things embody the goal of all great writing: the more perfect union of style and substance. Borofka's prose may be chiseled, but his sensibility is warm and humane; his wit may be mordant, but it is also merciful. To read these exquisite stories is to be reminded, as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, that human beings are made up of marble and mud."

"The comedy of seeking is rarely so sympathetically portrayed as in Borofka's hands; he captures perfectly the poignancy of dopey mortals dreaming and scheming to reach the divine."