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"  Amber Dermont, whose \u00ADdebut novel, The Starboard Sea, was a critical and commercial success, again impresses with her imaginative powers and cutting humor in Damage Control (St. Martin&amp;#039;s), a collection of \u00ADstories that examine some of the \u00ADharsher realities of wealth, \u00ADinheritance, and family ties. Her protagonists encounter \u00ADadversity in \u00ADvarious incarnations, from the banal to the fantastical, and draw us in unexpected and often \u00ADdisconcerting directions. Dermont has crafted a contradictory cast of characters who struggle at life&amp;#039;s crossroads. In &amp;quot;The Language of \u00ADMartyrs,&amp;quot; a prospective mother-in-law\u2014a diminutive Russian immigrant unwilling to relinquish her hold over her only son\u2014is &amp;quot;a pocket-sized martyr, a redheaded action figure whose superhero skill set included the badger, the guilt trip, the \u00ADsupreme glare of disappointment.&amp;quot; In &amp;quot;Lyndon,&amp;quot; a teen refuses to reconcile her \u00ADfather&amp;#039;s sudden death with the unex\u00ADpected pregnancy of her power-banker mother, a woman who, &amp;quot;with a phone call\u2026could place a lien on your ancestral home or buy you the \u00ADostrich farm you&amp;#039;d \u00ADalways dreamed of owning&amp;quot; Amid missed connections, unmet expectations, and things left unsaid, Dermont&amp;#039;s gifted but damned narrators baldly articulate the pain and irony of finding themselves adrift in the seemingly beautiful worlds they inhabit. In &amp;quot;Stella at the Winter Palace,&amp;quot; a young widow recalls, &amp;quot;when my husband died at home in our bed, I was in the living room looking out the window, watching a graceful fat man dance.&amp;quot; Dermont balances a proclivity for abstraction with a remarkable attention to detail, constructing a poetic tension between apathy and emotion that makes for an unsettling, provocative, and worthwhile read. Liked this story? Get it first when you subscribe to ELLE magazine. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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