In Alligator, David Ryan's experiments in language and form produce 23 stark, lyrical stories that explore the human condition. Kaleidoscopic, surprising, and occasionally shocking, Ryan's liminal realism shifts between incantatory parables and a hard-scrabble, fractured reality, rooted in the deep, visceral logic of memory, wild impulse, and dream. Alligator's stories collect desire, dislocation of family, love, and estrangement into a brutalist architecture-where occasional sharp eruptions of chaos co-exist with hope and grace.