A searing collection about gentrification, racism, and sexuality. Varela provides invaluable insight on the ways stress impacts the characters' lives, and how they persevere. Readers will be floored. Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "Alejandro Varela is one of my favorite short story writers An iconoclast of tenderness, a compass in the storm this life always is." - Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel "The People Who Report More Stress dissects the minutiae of relationships to self, city, space, and sensibility so we don't numbly succumb to the 'structured order of things.'" - Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of The Freezer Door The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body and the body politic. In "Midtown-West Side Story," alvaro, a restaurant worker struggling to support his family, begins selling high-end designer clothes to his co-workers, friends, neighbors, and the restaurant's regulars in preparation for a move to the suburbs. "The Man in 512" tracks Manny, the childcare worker for a Swedish family, as he observes the comings and goings of an affluent co-op building.