World Famous Love Acts: Stories

In this debut collection, Brian Leung creates a diverse landscape of distinctive characters. Among them, a 4'10" hyper-blonde Asian adult-film actress in Los Angeles, an archeologist working in China with her sun-scarred skin, a Midwestern screenwriter trying to "burn off" his accent, and a man with AIDS waiting to go home to die.
Loneliness and a persistent reach for meaning and comfort hold all these characters together. In "Six Ways to Jump off a Bridge," a Chinese egg-farmer confronts the solitude of old age after learning yet another person has made a suicidal jump from a bridge overlooking his home. In "Executing Dexter," two young boys from broken homes invent ways to torture and kill handmade dolls. And "Leases" takes place during "the time of morning to choose names for babies that will never be born" as a man waits to meet his wife in an apartment where for years he has brought male lovers.