I'm Not Sam

Now I'm way beyond confusion.Now I'm scared.I've slid down the rabbit-hole and what's down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she's having. She's changed, somehow overnight. I don't know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you'd thread a belt through the loops of your jeans.And now I'm shivering too.In some fundamental way she's changed...

From Booklist

Life is good for Patrick and his wife of eight years, Sam, until the night when Patrick finds Sam naked and trembling in the corner. He addresses her by name and she screams out, “I’m not Sam!” Who she is, she claims, is Lily, and, judging by her behavior, she’s about five years old. A trip to the hospital confirms there is nothing physically awry—so who the hell is Lily? This is a novella-length work, but the authors wring out more than enough awkwardness, as Patrick watches his sexy and confident wife pouting for candy, picking her nose in public, and having trouble wiping up after bathroom visits. It’s painfully clear early on how the plot is gathering steam: Patrick’s increasingly unbearable urge to make love to his wife, just like normal, even though now that might make him something of a pedophile. You’d expect nothing less from the provocateurs behind The Woman (2012), whom you can almost hear giggling in the background at the reader’s discomfort. An epilogue provides some concrete answers—and delivers a well-needed climactic kick. --Daniel Kraus

About the Author

Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for a former actor, singer, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk a former flower child and baby boomer who figures that in 1956 Elvis, dinosaurs and horror probably saved his life. His first novel, Off Season, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography. He personally disagrees but is perfectly happy to let you decide for yourself. His short story The Box won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from the HWA, his story Gone won again in 2000 and in 2003 he won Stokers for both best collection for Peaceable Kingdom and best long fiction for Closing Time. He has written eleven novels, the latest of which are Red, Ladies' Night, and The Lost. His stories are collected in The Exit At Toledo Blade Boulevard, Broken on the Wheel of Sex, and Peaceable Kingdom. His novella The Crossings was cited by Stephen King in his speech at the 2003 National Book Awards.Lucky McKee is an American director, writer, and actor known for the film May, which has acquired a loyal cult following, and his adaptations of Jack Ketchum's work.

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