FINALIST, AMERICAN LEGACY BOOK AWARDS "The real pleasure of this book lies in Stapleton's irrepressible approach to narrative structure. Long, loose chains of events culminate in volta-like swerves.... these endings refashion early meanderings in thrilling flashes." - The New York Times "Stapleton's complex narrative structure will undoubtedly bedevil and enchant while wrestling with fundamental questions about identity." - Politico "In Lara Stapleton's The Ruin of Everything , stories dealt with issues of bifurcated identities and self-confidence or the lack thereof in the lives of Filipino Americans and how they negotiate their conflicting, slippery claims on the New York and/or Manila states of mind." - The News International "An Anaïs Nin of late capitalism's bohemia, Lara Stapleton writes like an oracle of an underworld-of miscegenated loves and translocated broken souls-of characters unaware or ruinously conscious-and she inscribes that world in us with lust and wit and always that deep joy that encompasses sorrows bred in the bone, the race, the colors of one's skin, the heart, and of course the tongue: the word." -Gina Apostol, author of Insurrecto "With a keen eye for human ambitions and human frailties, Stapleton brings us the comic turmoil of characters steeped in the sorrows and absurdities of modern life; reaching for connection and erring, reaching for home and missing. Brimming with hard-edged loneliness, these stories reach into the underbellies of our deepest hopes and fears." -Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, author of My Heart Underwater