This image is the cover for the book How It Was for Me

How It Was for Me

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less, a debut collection of ten short stories featuring characters haunted by their decisions and memories.

With a classic storyteller’s gift for nuance and understanding, and a poet’s grace for language, Andrew Sean Greer makes a remarkable debut with How It Was for Me. Focusing on the lives of eleven people—those who have discovered and been uncovered by the truths of life, those who have sacrificed, those who have fallen—Greer fashions a unified, stunning portrait of America, one with the ultimate force and candor of testimonial.

Praise for How It Was for Me

An LA Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year

“Crystal-like clarity . . . outstanding . . . nuanced language . . . Greer is a writer worth watching.” —Martin Wilson, The Austin Chronicle

“Impressive . . . Greer’s descriptive talents are immense. . . . While these stories are thick with melancholy, their frankness is refreshing.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Greer reveals sensitive, unpredictable characters in direct but subtle prose, saving his most powerful stories for the end. . . . Many of these stories project that same kind of effortlessness—suggesting that more strong writing from Greer will follow.” —Publishers Weekly

Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of several works of fiction, including The Story of a Marriage, which The New York Times has called an "inspired, lyrical novel," and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a best book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. He is the recipient of the Northern California Book Award, the California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, the O Henry Award for short fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library. Greer lives in San Francisco.

Picador