Sorry I Worried You

Gary Fincke's Sorry I Worried You won the Flannery O' Connor Award for good reason. If anything, Fincke is a chronicler of everyday life, of burger joints and strip malls, of lives that often go unnoticed in many writers' hands yet exist all around us in present day America. In the tradition of writers like Raymond Carver and Richard Yates, Fincke uses the desperation of the mundane as inspiration. He doesn't rely on cheap tricks. There's no melodrama or experimentation here. Instead, what you get is straightforward realism that's more interested in character than plot. And his prose pops on every page, reflecting his background as a poet. If you're in the market for a collection of technically flawless, unpretentious stories of middle class anxiety, this is the book for you.