Stop That Girl

From the first story of Elizabeth McKenzies beguiling debut collection we are drawn into the offbeat worldview of sharp-eyed intrepid Ann Ransom. Stop That Girl chronicles Anns colorful coming-of-age travails from her childhood in a disjointed family through her tender adolescence and beyond. . In the captivating title story our eight-year-old heroine is sent by her pregnant mother on a whirlwind jaunt to Europe with her iconoclast grandmother known even to her family as Dr. Frostand comes home to find her family completely reconfigured. In SOS Dr. Frost returns to haunt Ann in college her visit colliding with a famous poets appearance on campus. We Know Where We Are But Not Why is set during a summer at the Grand Canyon and contrasts Anns angst-ridden yearning for a philosophical schoolmate back home to her mothers happier pursuits of a lively Australian activist. . Along the way Ann discovers the absurdities that lurk around every corner of a young womans life by way of oafish neighbors overzealous boyfriends prurient vegetable salesmen and sour landlords.. In these keenly funny highly original stories Ann and the people around her are forced to reassess their complex relationships and along the way find happiness on the brink of calamity. Stop That Girl is a brilliant examination of the exigencies of love and the fragile fabric of family and heralds the emergence of a remarkable new voice in fiction.