About
With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise—tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence.
Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page—honest, cutting, and wise.
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Praise
“Somewhere between sinister and gleeful the characters in Grant Faulkner’s story collection All the Comfort Sin Can Provide blow open pleasure—guilty pleasure, unapologetic pleasure, accidental pleasure, repressed pleasure. Really, at the heart of all identity is the reach for pleasure, and then what actually comes, all those moments of slippage where we do the wrong thing, take a ridiculous risk, double down on failure, land in a forsaken place, slip the mainstream of things enough to change and become. These characters exude beauty from their flaws. These stories are lit.”
–Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of the novel The Book of Joan
“Full of bad behavior and a ferocious desire for escape, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide is a catalog of longing. Faulkner’s arresting characters broadcast their worst decisions from grimy motel rooms, greasy kitchens, and sprawling American highways, each of them hellbent on the promise of something better.”
–Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light, nominated for the 2019 National Book Award
“All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delivers on the promise of Grant Faulkner’s daring debut with a follow-up collection of stories that excavates possibility, salvation, and the deceptive comforts one finds in so many pleasures.”
–Adam Johnson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection Fortune Smiles
Selected Press
Grant Faulkner on Sin as Experimentation
September 27, 2021
In this episode, Grant Faulkner joins Mitzi to discuss his book All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, out now from Black Lawrence Press.
The Joy and Angst of a Newly Released Book, featuring Grant Faulkner
In the final show of Year 3 of Write-minded, Brooke interviews Grant about his newest book, a collection of stories called All the Comfort Sins Can Provide. In the interviewee chair, Grant shares the highs and the lows of publishing a new book—the fear and the angst and the joys and the expectations. Having doled out excellent advice over these past three years, Grant realizes during this week’s show that it’s not so easy to follow all our great advice.
NaNoWriMo leader Grant Faulkner, an Oskaloosa native, returns to central Iowa with sin on his mind
July 22, 2021
Grant Faulkner has been contemplating sinners.
The idea sprang from a book he wrote, made up of 100-word stories.
“My good friend was reading my collection, ‘Fissures’ and she highlighted the sentence, ‘All the comfort sin can provide,’ and said it would make a great title,” said Faulkner.
Review: Story collection’s multitude of sins reveals both fear and freedom
July 6, 2021
Is it a sin to simply do as one wants — to feed, instead of starve, some of the most basic human instincts? Faulkner examines this question in a thoughtful and probing way. Through characters that are seeking something more — a more fulfilling relationship or the promise of a better life — he looks at not only sin itself, but also the motivation behind it and the different feelings it leaves us with. As Faulkner writes in “Mademoiselle in the Coffee Shop”: “most people riding a bus at 8:00 on a Monday morning regret the times they didn’t sin more than the times they did.”
Book Review: All the Comfort Sin Can Provide
July 1, 2021
Faulkner (Fissures) returns with a collection of vivid snapshots anchored with telling detail. Throughout, Faulkner showcases an ability to pinpoint specificity of character, location, and time, whatever a story’s length.