A good owner's manual takes the unexpected into account; the more extreme the eventuality the better. In the same spirit, A Guide to Being Born…deals with the desolation and surreptitious thrills that come to us through ownership of a body and its accompanying life…Each story in this collection finds a way to record the tensions between the corporeal and the invisible, the forces that animate us but ultimately can't be dissected, our anti-anatomies. The dismay of coming to the final page is easily combated by following the example of Ausubel's characters and beginning all over again.

Ausubel follows up her debut novel, No One is Here Except All of Us, with a charming, at times precious collection of stories that tackles the frustrations and fantasies of being alive. Split into four parts—birth, gestation, conception, and love—the volume deposits characters in a real world gone awry, a place where true adoration is accompanied by the growth of additional “love-arms,” men sprout drawers of bone in their chests, and the ghosts of Civil War generals play catch with youngsters. Dabbling frequently in broken families, the author’s greatest triumphs come in narratives that weave the defeated with the absurd. “Atria” finds a pregnant teenager convinced her growing baby will not be human, and in “Snow Remote,” a family practices strange habits, from manning an elaborate Christmas display to engaging in phone sex—all while living under the clouded memory of a lost matriarch. Quite often, and with great effect, the misplaced and aimless find solace. Still, the quirk factor occasionally works overtime, leading to eccentric character-naming (Mother Mom; Professor Paul Pretoria) and jarringly peculiar moments, like in “Saver,” when a character performs an impromptu dental inspection on a first date. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit. (May)

"Each story in this collection finds a way to record the tensions between the corporeal and the invisible, the forces that animate us but ultimately can’t be dissected, our anti-anatomies. The dismay of coming to the final page is easily combated by following the example of Ausubel’s characters and beginning all over again."—The New York Times Book Review

“Aggressively imaginative.”—The New York Times

"Lyrical stories arranged around themes of birth, gestation, conception and love. . . . Ausubel has a gift of language so rich that even the most mundane events are invested with poetry, and many of her characters are in need of all the poetry they can muster."—Kirkus

"Ausubel is a master stylist of vibrant, concise prose, and these stories, with love most often at their cores, can be appreciated for that alone."—Booklist

"These stories reminded me of branches full of cherry blossoms: fresh, delicate, beautiful, expressive, otherworldly.  I eagerly read from one story to the next."—Aimee Bender

If you love the literary short story, then Cassandra Campbell and Kirby Heyborne do not disappoint with this production. They give voice to the rich, lyrical prose of this collection in soft, lush tones that are not only easy on the ear but also evocative. Their pace and diction are precise and measured during the narration, a style that places the dialogue in sharp contrast. This is an especially good listen for those who want to dip into and out of a volume. The characterizations of a wide cast show the dexterity of both the writer and the narrators. M.R. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Lyrical stories arranged around themes of birth, gestation, conception and love--yes, in that order. "Poppyseed," from the section entitled Birth, presents a dual narrative in which a father gives us a relatively objective perspective and a mother a far more subjective one on their severely incapacitated daughter, Poppy. A doctor has proposed using Poppy as a surgical experiment, and his puffed-up view of himself reduces her status to that of a laboratory animal, in contrast to the heartbreaking surge of love the parents experience. "Chest of Drawers" takes us into the realm of the surreal, for here, the husband of a pregnant woman does indeed find little drawers growing in his chest, and in them, he begins to carry small items (such as his wife's lipstick) as well as small dolls that distortedly mirror his wife's condition. In "Atria," Hazel Whiting loses her virginity to Johnny, a clerk at the 7-Eleven, and shortly thereafter is raped by another man. When she becomes pregnant, her status increases when people believe she's carrying the child of a rapist even though Johnny is the father. Buck, a girl in "Catch and Release," is a talented athlete who wants to grow up to be a baseball player. Actually named after first lady Mamie Eisenhower, Buck loves her nickname but never discovers its sordid origin--when her wayward father, Pops, found out Buck's mother was pregnant with her, he contemptuously threw a dollar bill on the bed, calling out "This is my contribution! Call that baby Buck, 'cause that's all he's worth!' " Ausubel has a gift of language so rich that even the most mundane events are invested with poetry, and many of her characters are in need of all the poetry they can muster.