An incisive, poignant, often hilarious look at contemporary relationships, Allison Amend's much-anticipated Things That Pass for Love eschews the familiar dating scene in favor of portrayals of fractured families, urban schools, small towns, book clubs, cults, academia, golf culture, and--yes--sex in modern life. A teacher struggles to bond with jaded students as bodies drop from the sky; a man meets his illegitimate son for an awkward pumpkin picking excursion; a professor develops a sexual obsession with the student destined to surpass him; and a female cyberotica writer looks for conventionality in the form of a suitor who may be in love with her dog. Whether writing about a small town murder, homeschooling, experiments on lab mice, or the disintegration of a long marriage over the course of a golf game, Amend's characters are more than whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny, they are chillingly real, memorable people looking for love--or what passes for it.