Damage Control displays Amber Dermont's remarkable gift for portraying characters at crossroads. In "Lyndon," a daughter visits presidential landmarks following the death of her father. In "Damage Control," a young man works at an etiquette school while his girlfriend is indicted for embezzlement. A widow rents herself to elderly women and vacations with them as a "professional grandchild" in "Stella at the Winter Palace." And in "The Language of Martyrs" a couple houses a mail order bride on behalf of the husband's Russian mother.
Dermont's stories have previously been published in many literary magazines and have also been featured in anthologies edited by Jane Smiley and Dave Eggers. Damage Control includes three previously unpublished pieces.
"[Dermont] seems to be able to throw down a convincing story set anywhere, spun from any premise. [She] is a deft writer, bullish on her characters, assertive in her descriptions of these specific worlds....As a guide to these stories we can simply rely on Dermont's desirous, tender driver of a narrator."
The New York Times
"[A] sparkling collection. Ms. Dermont's characters win us over with their stoic, even bemused, acceptance of disaster and abasement. In the collection's outstanding story, "Lyndon," a teenage girl loses her father in a freak accident ("My father died because our house was infested with ladybugs," is the irresistible opening line), discovers that her aristocratic mother has gotten pregnant six mon
The Wall Street Jounal
"Dermont...again impresses with her imaginative powers and cutting humor. Amid missed connections, unmet expectations, and things left unsaid, Dermont's gifted but damned narrators baldly articulate the pain and irony of finding themselves adrift in the seemingly beautiful worlds they inhabit. Dermont balances a proclivity for abstraction with a remarkable attention to detail, constructing a poeti
