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Winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award (2024) The University of Iowa Press, November 2024

Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, Longlist

At the heart of the stories in Everything Flirts are some of life’s trickiest questions: Why is it so hard to make the first move on a date? How do we find the person we will love? When you finally find a person to love, how do you convince them to love you back?

With a mixture of humor and (ir)reverence, Sharon Wahl hijacks classic works of philosophy and turns their focus to romantic love. The philosopher Wittgenstein reminds us of the limits of language: Is there argument, a logical deduction, that will cause another person to love us? "Zeno and the Distance Between Us" questions the notion that going to a movie—a place where you aren't supposed to talk and it's difficult to look at each other—is a good idea for a first date. A woman afraid of love applies Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian principles to find her match, testing every man she meets until she finds one who is perfect. Nonetheless, she wonders: Is she ready to fall in love forever? Running throughout these stories is the feeling that romantic love creates a very particular kind of loneliness, a lock-and-key loneliness eased, or increased, only by the presence or absence of the person we love.

In Everything Flirts, the sublime and the ridiculous come together to playfully examine why romantic love is a subject so difficult that philosophers throughout history have chosen to ignore it.

Reviews

Here fiction and philosophy are paired like wine with cheese.  Wahl moves us through stages of relationships, from unrequited yearnings to breakups, creating subtle linkages and uniting the stories with her nimble, playful style. Surreal flashes of humor serve as a welcome counterpoint to the weight of Big Ideas. These stories bring old concepts to new, vivacious life. —Kirkus Reviews [excerpt]

Delightfully clever and philosophically complex, the stories in Everything Flirts unfold like dreams, carrying you from one poignant love affair to the next. The prose is exquisite and seductive. The characters charm and disturb. And the collection as a whole lingers with you. Like a haunting. —Jamil Jan Kochai, judge, John Simmons Short Fiction Award

Eloquent, elegant, deftly crafted, fun, and fascinating, Everything Flirts is an impressive short story collection that will hold special appeal for romance fans and philosophy students alike. —Midwest Book Review