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The End of Youth is a collection of 13 linked stories, essays and rants, about carrying on after youth's hope is gone. In "Afraid of the Dark," a child learns that there is good reason to be afraid. The adolescent narrator of "Description of a Struggle" finds that love can be brutal. "The Smokers" examines an adult's realization that longevity means seeing loved ones die. Written with the same spare and vivid beauty as her earlier award-winning works, The End of Youth is certain to win even wider acclaim.

"Throughout her writing career, Brown has exhibited a rare sensitivity in delving into difficult, uncomfortable material—death, disease, imperfect bodies and minds . . . in this slim book . . . there's also humor and sensuality so intense it's visionary . . . "—San Francisco Chronicle

"A strange and wonderful first-person voice emerges from the stories of Rebecca Brown, who strips her language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need."—The New York Times Book Review

"Rarer than the newness, the wit, the vivid readability, is the deep caring understanding, the wholeness, the truth with which this astonishing, haunting writer creates her people."—Tillie Olsen

"In The End of Youth, her new collection of stories and essays, Brown turns [a] gentle yet relentless gaze onto herself—or rather, onto scenes remembered from her childhood. The result is effortlessly perverse and frequently hilarious."—Booklist

Rebecca Brown is the author of The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley's Girl, The Gifts of the Body and The Dogs. She lives in Seattle.

The End of Youth