[close] Secret Life is the definitive collection by a young writer widely regarded as one of the best fantasists in the world. Jeff VanderMeer has handpicked these 23 stories (three written exclusively for this collection), which reflect a diversity of approaches to key questions about the human condition: mortality, love, obsession and creativity - all shot through with dark humor and irony. Secret Life represents the author's continuing effort to stretch the narrative boundaries of fiction while still entertaining the reader. Yet all of these stories are related thematically: transformation and what it means to be human - and the reader too will be transformed, into one of the faithful, a confirmed believer in the short fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. [close]