I’m trying to not review the same kinds of books all the time, which put me in a conundrum. Out of all the weird short story collections I like, which one do I recommend?
So I’m going to cheat by giving you more than one, a collection of reviews about the bizarre, in short story form.
It was hard to choose which Kelly Link collection to include. Get in Trouble is definitely her most mature work, worth being a finalist for the Pulitzer. Instead, I chose Pretty Monsters, which is notable for a couple reasons.
Reason one: This is billed as her “YA debut,” but what it really does is collect some of her best work that was split up between two earlier (adult) collections: Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners.
Reason two: Illustrations by Shaun Tan. I think we’ve already been over how great he is.
These stories walk the line between whimsy and horror, whether it’s a teen trying to resurrect his dead girlfriend or a surreal TV show that seems to feed into the main character’s life. There’s elements of sci-fi and fantasy mixed up with sharp emotions and heady implications.
Link's stories always feel like they’re on the verge of bigger symbolism but you never quite grasp it. Some will find that intriguing and some will be frustrated.
I like to read Murakami best in spring and fall. It fits with the transitional seasons.
He’s well-known for his novels, but I think he’s strongest in short form. He has to concentrate on those in-between moments, the ones where the stories are.
And while I was feeling clever for coming up with that, I just re-read the introduction and it must have been lodged into my subconscious, because that’s exactly what Murakami told me he wants me to get out of his short stories.
As he writes, “If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes complement each other, creating a complete landscape that I treasure. The green foliage of the trees casts a pleasant shade over the earth, and the wind rustles the leaves, which are sometimes dyed a brilliant gold. Meanwhile, in the garden, buds appear on flowers, and colorful petals attract bees and butterflies, reminding us of the subtle transition from one season to the next.”
I suppose Murakami has that quality, to seep into your brain even as the details remain fuzzy. I can remember the dress in Tony Takitani or the description of ears in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman or the hallway in Birthday Girl, but they have the amorphous feeling of dreams. They make sense while simultaneously impossible to pin down.
Truthfully, I sometimes get Oyeyemi’s stories mixed up with others. Was it Kelly Link who wrote that story about puppets? Or Karen Russell about that mysterious house in Barcelona?
I wouldn’t say that’s an insult -- if you like either of those authors, definitely try Oyeyemi.
While not as interconnected as her stories in Mr. Fox, which has protagonists influencing the progress of each short story, there are some linking elements. Each story is built around a key. I can’t say that they unlock the truth, because “truth” seems like such a small word to the worlds that Oyeyemi builds.
Also, points to Oyeyemi for some great story titles: “sorry” doesn’t sweeten her tea; is your blood as red as this?; a brief history of the homely wench society; and if a book is locked there’s probably a good reason for that don’t you think.
For me, Karen Russell’s style is best in short story form. Her novel Swamplandia! was too much -- like an echo chamber for whimsy, feeding on itself.
With every short story, though, Russell has to force herself to start over, to readjust to the one detail that she built her story around.
In my favorite of the short stories, the titular Vampires in the Lemon Grove, the detail is a grandfatherly man who watches the lemons fall off trees.
Like her best stories, it is melancholy and wryly funny and uncanny.
Here’s Clyde describing the rotating hot dog machine: “Who would have guessed at such a device two hundred years ago? Back then we were all preoccupied with visions of apocalypse; Santa Francesca, the foundress of this very grove, gouged out her eyes while dictating premonitions of fire. What a shame, I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs.”
Short stories aren’t limited to prose. And while I feel a little bad about grouping together two graphic novels, as if they’re all the same, I’m running out of room on this post.
While in two very different styles, Tamaki and Davis both tell short stories that are elusive and emotionally resonant.
What drew me into Tamaki was reading The Clair-Free System. It’s available online and I’m going to link to it, so it could hook you in, too.
It’s a dream spun by the narrator for reasons that are mundane, and while you can see through it, you are simultaneously pulled into the dream.
As Eleanor Davis explains at the beginning of How To Be Happy, this is not a book anyone should read if they need advice on how to be happy. More often than not, it’s the small betrayals, blindnesses and fatigues that we take on while trying to be happy.
One of my favorite stories in this one is about a sister who comes back home for her father’s funeral and with her sister, has to confront what she’s gained and lost from leaving them behind. And while that seems pretty normal, keep in mind this takes place in some candy-coated dystopian society of the future.
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