The Temporary Life: Stories
is available in major bookstores and online at Powells.com, Amazon.com or BarnesAndNoble.com.

A reprint of The Temporary Life is available from The University of Akron Press with a new forward by the author and a reading group guide.

Praise for Eric Wasserman's The Temporary Life: Stories

In this stunning debut collection, Eric Wasserman's beautifully crafted stories chart the experiences of characters who, in various ways, must come to terms with the less-than-perfect realities of their lives. He writes with a rare mix of ironic wit and compassionate perception, and the result is both captivating and luminous. Whether he's depicting the hollow bar mitzvah of a middle-aged man's spoiled nephew or an estranged couple's unlikely attempt to save their dying son, his keen eye renders his characters extraordinary in their contradictions, compromises, and subtle moments of redemption.
~Frederick Reiken, author of The Lost Legends of New Jersey, The Odd Sea, and Day for Night.

Eric Wasserman probes the nether regions of the human spirit with a wisdom that belies his years. Restless, unflinching, tender, the voices in these rich and layered stories carry across a multitude of landscapes—family, politics, religion. Haunted by the echoes, you'll want to read them more than once.
~Anne Whitney Pierce, author of Rain Line and Galaxy Girls: Wonder Women : Stories

While it’s the “dubious attachment to ethnicity” in these stories that gives the collection the ballast to carry it to its target audience, for me, what floats the book is Wasserman’s way of layering humor—gentle, sly, and rabid—into many of these serious stories. A fine first book by a talented young man.
~Rick Hillis, author of Limbo River and Drue Heinz Literature Prize winner.

Readers are struck by his characters' humanity—their pain and panache, their pettiness and perseverance.
~Joseph Soldati, author of Making My Name and APOCALYPSE CLAM.