So Much a Part of You

The friends we make in our 20s and 30s change our lives in ways we could never guess, and the tender linked stories in debut author Polly Dugan's collection explore the multiple ways our relationships are intertwined. A young woman accompanies her boyfriend on a visit to the dying mother of his ex-girlfriend. As she watches them play chess together, she sees the man with whom she can grow old. Years later, when her own mother is dying, she will find herself yearning to reach out to the ex-girlfriend and take comfort in that moment from long ago.

Throughout the collection, as the characters reappear, friendships are tested and family secrets are revealed. Dugan explores how each of these women transition from one stage of life to another, the ripple effects of their emotional choices poignantly rising to the surface.

“"This is what short story should be: exact and faithful invocations, full of nerve and stranded emotion, which leave eddying waves of thought and strangeness that linger long after the covers are closed shut. The stories are simultaneously eerie and poignant. They achieve a cool distance and the captured moment, the effect of which is how lonely and alien we can be to ourselves and together. The pathway to the heart is through the mind. I think of such writers as Joy Williams and Ann Beattie, only more spare and more raw and who, in their own way, were more spare and raw than O'Connor and Welty."-- Robert Olmstead”

"A debut collection that could practically pass for a novel.... Subtlety of characterization is often the writer's strength, as her stories move through the conventional details of domesticity to panic attacks and 'uncharted insanity, ' showing the fragility beneath even the most stable lives."--Kirkus Reviews
"A quiet triumph.... SO MUCH A PART OF YOU marries the scope of a novel with the graceful economy of a good short story. The linked stories in the collection are individually modest, almost unobtrusive. Set against one another, though, they reveal surprising connections-reflecting perspective and insight back onto themselves.... Part of the pleasure of this book is that it brings the reader into glancing proximity to so many people, and so many stories. It's about as close as fiction comes to capturing the way people really do move in and out of each other's' lives."--Alison Hallett, Portland Mercury
"A solid debut.... Dugan's writing flows well and with thoughtfulness as she explores love, loss, and friendship through the three main characters and their families. Their decisions and foibles make for some emotional reading."--Publishers Weekly
"By portraying various individuals in their twenties and thirties as they move through formative stages in their lives, the ten linked stories in Dugan's debut collection convincingly capture the human condition.... With decisive economy and the dramatic immediacy lent by her use of the present tense, Dugan's powerful stories present a fast-paced, cohesive, and satisfying read."--Joyce Townsend, Library Journal
"Full of emotion. [Dugan's] characters experience love, loss, grief and anxiety, and she conveys those emotions beautifully."--Gayle Weiswasser, Readerly
"Polly Dugan makes the greatest deal the best of literature can offer-she will be honest, completely bare, and deliver a reader wholly into the secret world of her character's empathy. What a powerful and glorious thing it was to become these characters, to have my worldview touched by their lives. It's a rare skill to write pain with such love, such care, such warmth, and like Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout, Polly Dugan has achieved a small miracle in breaking my heart and still having me ask for more. SO MUCH A PART OF YOU announces a potent and fresh new voice to the landscape of short fiction."--Alan Heathcock
"Polly Dugan strikes the heart in SO MUCH A PART OF YOU."--Vanity Fair, "Hot Type"
"Polly Dugan's stories read like whispered secrets. With their quiet drama, their nuanced internal conflicts, their characters full of longing, they immerse us in the messy mysteries of ordinary lives. But their vision is clear-headed and generous: they show us that even our briefest connections, our smallest actions, our most private thoughts can have great weight and consequence."--Scott Nadelson, author of Aftermath
"Readers, take notice.... Strong characterization and acute rendering of settings provide glimpses into the successes and sorrows of these middle-class Irish Catholics.... Although short story fans are a natural audience for this promising debut, it will also appeal to general fiction readers."--Ellen Loughran, Booklist (starred review)
"The ten stories in this collection are beautiful and connect in unexpected ways-but underneath the beauty, the stories hum with electricity that is as unpredictable as a downed power line, as dangerous as the third rail, and I read with my breath held, and my heart in my throat. These are the best kind of stories-dark and tender and sharp."--Jodi Angel, author of You Only Get Letters From Jail
"There's a rawness to Polly Dugan's stories that lure you in and won't let go. The settings may be every day, but SO MUCH A PART OF YOU lingers in the imagination."--Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of The Pretty One
"This is what short story should be: exact and faithful invocations, full of nerve and stranded emotion, which leave eddying waves of thought and strangeness that linger long after the covers are closed shut. The stories are simultaneously eerie and poignant. They achieve a cool distance and the captured moment, the effect of which is how lonely and alien we can be to ourselves and together. The pathway to the heart is through the mind. I think of such writers as Joy Williams and Ann Beattie, only more spare and more raw and who, in their own way, were more spare and raw than O'Connor and Welty."--Robert Olmstead
"Utterly real and insightful."--BookPage
"What struck me about the stories in SO MUCH A PART OF YOU is how finely wrought they are, how controlled."--Steve Almond, Rumpus

Polly Dugan lives in Portland and is a reader at Tin House magazine. A former employee of Powell's Books, she is an alumna of the Tin House Writers Workshop. Dugan's first published story, A Matter of Time, was Line Zero's Spring 2012 Literary Contest Winner, Masquerades (as One At a Time), was Narrative's Story of the Week (December 2012), and Kitten Season was an Honourable Mention Recipient in Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers (August 2009).

The friends we make in our 20s and 30s change our lives in ways we could never guess, and the tender linked stories in debut author Polly Dugan's collection explore the multiple ways our relationships are intertwined. A young woman accompanies her boyfriend on a visit to the dying mother of his ex-girlfriend. As she watches them play chess together, she sees the man with whom she can grow old. Years later, when her own mother is dying, she will find herself yearning to reach out to the ex-girlfriend and take comfort in that moment from long ago.Throughout the collection, as the characters reappear, friendships are tested and family secrets are revealed. Dugan explores how each of these women transition from one stage of life to another, the ripple effects of their emotional choices poignantly rising to the surface.

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