Waiting for Elvis

Zany, over-the-top and sexy, while achingly poignant and real, Waiting for Elvis is the bitingly funny follow-up to Toni Graham’s award winning collection The Daiquiri Girls. In 11 darkly comic, interconnected stories that read as seamlessly as a novel, Graham exposes the hilarious side of loneliness and introduces Jane, the most beguiling single woman since Bridget Jones.

Nearing 50, Jane is a San Francisco psychotherapist-turned-dog walker, a wild woman in an ever-changing body. She hasn’t had a lover since Lars, the unfaithful, hedonistic love of her life, was decapitated in a car accident after a New Year’s Eve quarrel. But grief be damned! With equal parts alcohol and attitude, Jane lurches after all life has to offer—ever reminded that meeting the right man is as likely as a proposal from a dead Elvis.

“Remarkable . . . Graham takes characters who could easily become dreary stereotypes—and fleshes them out beautifully. Graham doesn’t wallow in these women’s vulnerability, but she doesn’t apologize for it either. She uses their loneliness and confusion as backdrops for the action, not as personality traits. And her prose is entertaining without being forced: Graham allows a good deal of brainy good humor to flow naturally.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Graham’s stories are as intimate, intelligent and intensely ‘feminine’ as those of Jane Bowles or Jean Rhys. Her work is full of heart, smarts, honesty and a wickedness that is uniquely her own. Classy stuff from a very cool writer.”—Molly Giles

Toni Graham is a native of San Francisco, currently an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University. Her first book, The Daiquiri Girls (University of Massachusetts) was the winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction. Among many magazines, her stories have appeared in Other Voices, Writers Forum and Playgirl.

The most beguiling single woman since Bridget Jones in eleven darkly comic interconnected stories.

Kirkus Reviews

Eleven linked stories develop a character from an award-winning first collection. Graham's The Daiquiri Girls (1998) featured four San Franciscan women, one of whom, fortysomething Jane McAllister, now takes center stage in a sequence of connected episodes starting with "Kilter" and "Guest" from Daiquiri. Jane has loved three men-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as she refers to divorced Bert, who fathered her daughter; Andrew, who married her because she was like his mother; and Lars, who died in a car crash. Four years later, Jane is living alone, unhappy at work, menopausal, and ends "Kilter" by taking refuge under the bed. Subsequent stories move her a couple of years into the future, but not far beyond these concerns. In "Twins," she's become a clinical psychologist but is dissatisfied with her clients; two stories later, in "The Blue Book of Dogs," she sells her practice and becomes a dog-walker; three stories beyond that she has moved to Cheever, in northern California, and returned to psychology. Her other preoccupations-principally Lars, sex, and survival-follow equally circular paths. In "Guest" and "In the Realm of the Senses," she has sexual partners, but they're predictably fleeting. Author Graham illumines Jane's world with gallows humor, ranging from the surreal to the simply withering, as in the case of Jane's stress incontinence. Indeed, the volume is unflinching in its focus on the plight of the single, middle-aged woman and, despite diversions, this is the place to which all the narratives return, sometimes manipulatively-as in "Eyes of Glass," where Jane's move to Cheever renders her "friendless, loveless and just about moneyless" all over again. Meanwhile,Elvis becomes a Godot-like mantra of unfulfilled expectation, not just in the title story but also in "Fortune": as Graham writes, Jane, dreaming of rescue, "might as well expect a proposal from dead Elvis." Rueful, quirky writing: in essence, middle-aged chick-lit. Agent: Caron Knauer/Caron K Literary Enterprises

Toni Graham is a native of San Franciso, currently an Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. Her first book, 'The Daiquiri Girls' (UMass/1998) was the winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction. Co-editor of Fiction for "The Cimarron Review," her stories are published in many literary and popular American magazines, including 'Playgirl.'