that to be honest about sex one has to be dark and brutal and mean. Klam proves that the truth, even if unvarnished, is more nuanced than four-letter words (or the seven-letter gerundial forms thereof). His stories, about my friends (I am almost sure they are about my friends), pierce and leap, are always bitingly funny, and are so, so alive. Alive. Good lord. I hope everyone reads this goddamn book, because Klam is telling the truth while almost no one else is." —David Eggers  collection. The stories are brilliantly constructed. Great voices. Great point of view. They make me think. Très 'slanky.'" —Alice Elliott Dark  had me riveted. He is a writer who somehow manages to make wayward, confused, opinionated, often irritating, often angry characters hilarious and fascinating and human. Klam is unafraid to show us in all our sex-obsessed pettiness and our love-obsessed vanity. He writes with a bracing freshness and originality about undazzling subjects and makes them shine. I can't stop reading him. I hope I never have to." —Susan Minot  through the warped hearts of Klam's narrators. A wild debut from a gifted writer." —Junot Dìaz  and thought patterns as few writers can, Klam practically channels his protagonists, allowing them to inhabit him rather than the other way around.... Throughout the collection, Klam demonstrates his mastery of the fine art of irony, exposing the nerve endings of his complex, often tormented, sometimes funny, characters, while allowing the reader to make his or her own judgments." —Publishers Weekly Read full starred review  the truth about relationships.... Klam writes provocatively of sex and violent fantasies fired by frustration and inner emptiness.... Klam's observations are so astute that single people, even those who wish they weren't , will at least for a time breathe a sigh of relief that they're alone." —USA Today Read full review  unexpected outbursts, embarrassing insights and oddball revelations rendered in agile sentences that turn on a dime, from sweetness to obscenity, from comedy to cruelty. It's a riveting, honest and unvarnished voice that sounds like no one else's." —Los Angeles Times Read full review " —The New York Times Read full review  in fiction... Klam writes in a plain-speech style about sex and love and money (don't let's confuse the three) with an energy and an immediacy that few other writers possess.... Like the stories of Salinger and Cheever, these will doubtlessly be remembered as a chronicle of their time, place and class. Few short story writers are funnier than Klam. Few are so horribly true." —Esquire Read full review  of its own, thanks to Klam's wonderful eye for detail, his ability to find the perfect word or phrase at all times and the precision with which he repeatedly nails the fragile braggadocio of the modern American male." —San Francisco Chronicle Read full review  with his debut collection.... The brilliance of the book lies in its inexplicably original narrative voice. You have never read anyone who puts sentences together in exactly this way. No matter how boorish the behavior of the characters becomes, you simply cannot stop reading." —Washington Times Read full review  breathtaking.... Klam goes... deep into the darkened heart of the modern American male.... Funny, surprising and often fearless." —San Diego Union-Tribune Read full review  of the great New Yorker minimalists... A lot of writers work that "natural" style, but they retain their tin and academic ear. Klam is spot-on, he's genuinely funny, as opposed to "book-funny," and he's actually relevant the way, say, Don Delillo is relevant." —Baltimore Sun Read full review  Klam nails what it means to be a heterosexual man in America today.... Again and again, Klam's men wage the battle between horniness and love with depressing, hilarious, and, well, honest results.... The kudos are justified -- Sam the Cat is a remarkable debut." —The Austin Chronicle Read full review  think about such things as failure, anxiety, and the way they like their female attributes... The story that closes this ruthlessly insightful debut, "European Wedding," reveals that Klam has a major bead on women." —Harper's Bazaar Read full review   I ever read was so good, I almost passed out. Published in an old issue of the New Yorker, it's about a guy, his girl, their abortion, and an uncooked chicken. I can only compare Matthew's writing to long letters from male best friends--the kind replete with matter-of-fact, naked, sometimes-vulgar details about life, love and women. The abortion/chicken story is called, "There Should Be A Name for It," and is included in Sam the Cat, Matthew's first collection of short stories. Read it." —Jane  the author into the spotlight when it ran in The New Yorker, a guy goes out looking to get laid, then finds himself hitting on a man in drag.... His taut, spooky prose recalls another connoisseur of erotic disappointment, Lorrie Moore. But where Moore is partial to neurotic women, Klam's subject is the guy who wishes he could transcend himself and be redeemed from the small and angry America in which he's stuck." —Amazon.com Read full review  in our tracks. It's even more rare when a book has us on page 33 before we've realized that we're standing like a moron on the subway platform and three trains have passed us by.... Matthew Klam's debut collection of short stories... is the most riveting thing we've picked up in some time... a voice that is remarkably dead-on, crass yet poetic, never frilly, funny, self-mocking and profoundly human." —Daily Candy Read full review