A colorful, somewhat wicked collection of stories that are touching as often as they are laugh-out-loud funny.
Thirty-four wry bits of metafiction from the eternally ironic Klosterman (Chuck Klosterman X, 2017, etc.).
Billed as “Fictional Nonfiction,” in this we get more echoes of the creative process behind Gen X icon Klosterman’s two absurdist novels (Downtown Owl, 2008, and The Visible Man, 2011) than we do from his tart essays and meandering nonfiction. It kicks off with an interesting scenario in “Raised in Captivity,” in which a nominally successful dude is presented with an existential crisis when he discovers a puma in an airplane bathroom. It’s a bit worrisome that the collection is absolutely laced with confessions—the perp being interviewed in “Experience Music Project,” the dying father in “To Live in the Hearts of Those We Leave Behind Is Not to Die, Except That It Actually Is,” and the guy who swears he didn’t kill those people in “Execute Again,” to name just a few—but they’re acidly funny. Even stranger: The serial attacker in “Cat Person,” who...rubs cats on people, is drawn in glorious noir-tinged prose. Klosterman not only excels at character and dialogue, as the people and conversations in the book seem very organic, but he’s also keen on setting up offbeat scenarios, which often drift toward the bizarre. In “Every Day Just Comes and Goes,” a regular Joe finds himself arguing with a time traveler. There’s a surreal conversation about magic in “Tricks Aren’t Illusions.” A terribly polite housewife hires an overeager hit man in “Not That Kind of Person.” Elsewhere, Klosterman savages political correctness in “Toxic Actuality,” conjures up a band with a hit single that’s superracist in “Blizzard of Summer,” and imagines a death cult in Silicon Valley in “What About the Children.” Armed with everything from existential crises to a robot dinosaur, there’s really something for everyone in this crisp collection of imaginative snippets.
A colorful, somewhat wicked collection of stories that are touching as often as they are laugh-out-loud funny.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1792-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers...
Exploring humankind's place in the universe and the nature of humanity, many of the stories in this stellar collection focus on how technological advances can impact humanity’s evolutionary journey.
Chiang's (Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002) second collection begins with an instant classic, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which won Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette in 2008. A time-travel fantasy set largely in ancient Baghdad, the story follows fabric merchant Fuwaad ibn Abbas after he meets an alchemist who has crafted what is essentially a time portal. After hearing life-changing stories about others who have used the portal, he decides to go back in time to try to right a terrible wrong—and realizes, too late, that nothing can erase the past. Other standout selections include “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a story about a software tester who, over the course of a decade, struggles to keep a sentient digital entity alive; “The Great Silence,” which brilliantly questions the theory that humankind is the only intelligent race in the universe; and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” which chronicles the consequences of machines raising human children. But arguably the most profound story is "Exhalation" (which won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Short Story), a heart-rending message and warning from a scientist of a highly advanced, but now extinct, race of mechanical beings from another universe. Although the being theorizes that all life will die when the universes reach “equilibrium,” its parting advice will resonate with everyone: “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so.”
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way.Pub Date: May 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94788-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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