Alicia Erian's deliciously grown-up debut may not be a book for nice girls, but it has a lot to teach us about the unruly nature of desire. A college-bound student plots to lose her virginity to a pizza waiter, a spelling champion spends her afternoons in the bath with the classroom bully and a newlywed finds herself strangely drawn to her husband's father. Bold, achingly funny and never less than heartfelt, these are stories about women who dare to grasp at experience in the knowledge that they may live to regret it. The Brutal Language of Love announces the arrival of a true and highly original voice in American fiction.