In brilliantly strange stories that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could ...
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Aug 06, 2011
Lee
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Righteous author dude is one of the few writers I've become friendly with in Philly. Two things I know about him informed my reading of his first collection of stories: He drinks faster than I do and he smokes before he swims. He also taught me a new word in the first story: "tupacalypse." The inclusion of tender postcards sent to his wife nicely complicates the rougher gist of the stories, which often seemed sort of language-y to me (I mean: I was aware of the author's attention to t More...
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Aug 11, 2010
Brandon
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This is a book to just give yourself over to. It has it's own rules and views, so no use trying to meet it halfway, you just need to follow along. Truly dark horrifying and unsettling ("The Champion of Forgetting" -- a delusional first person account of a young girl's abduction and induction into the world of kidney thieves), other times it's darkly absurd, in the vein of Ionesco or Beckett (Took and Lost, Oh, Little So-and-So -- a man gives a hitchhiking little girl a ride to a cemete
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Oct 29, 2009
featherproof
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In brilliantly strange stories that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could have never imagined.
Coming April 2010! A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In More...
Coming April 2010! A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In More...
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Dec 20, 2010
Tom
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I'd say 6 of the 9 stories were really pretty awesome. The other 3 weren't bad by any means, but weren't necessarily for me, which is to say my aesthetic is clearly different from Christian's at times, but the language and the inventiveness and the kind of manic energy that permeates this whole collection made it a joy to roll through in just a few hours, and in some ways it stands as a testament to the continuing relevance of short stories.
Dec 28, 2011
David
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This book is an interesting mix of reflective insight about the human condition and refreshingly imaginative total bizarreness. Though it can get a tad confusing at times, the writing is nicely free and fluid. I especially like the odd little postcards that separate and bookend the stories, completely strange little notes from a man on vacation to his wife who is on vacation with him and will receive the postcards upon their return home.
Sep 16, 2010
Amishrage
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this book was disgusting. i mean, it was like...bizarre and disturbing, but every single one of the short stories in it came out with some kind of moral. so i didn't feel too dirty for reading it.
Jun 22, 2010
Grainne
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Really this book was just okay. A loosly tied series of shorts torn from the headlines so to speak. In actuallity, it was torn from the buried pages of the news, but news still the same. Fiction written about the possibly why's or what were they thinkings. Mildly entertaining.
Oct 31, 2010
I am getting concerned about the increasing weirdness of Adam Levin–recommended books...
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Dec 15, 2010
Alison
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Christian is my buddy from Philadelphia, so I have an obvious bias, but I really think the short story medium is working for him! Like Gertrude Stein and Don DeLillo had a perverse lovechild.
May 06, 2010
Mark
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Christian TeBordo uses word repetition and a layered sentence structure brilliantly in The Awful Possibilities. Never do you feel grounded in place or character, yet never do you complain.
Aug 05, 2011
Maureen
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Lackadaisical, sprawling writing that can't decide what it wants to say, too many typos, smarmy wordplay, and an unappealing flow made this book really, really disappointing.
Apr 25, 2011
Luis
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Things that are cool: the first and last story, both of which use second person to staggering results; the innovative storytelling; the ferocious energy of the stories--you can feel it. Things that are butt:often I got less from the actual story/character part of the story than the framework/language.
Dec 27, 2010
Patrick
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Tight tales of high weirdness. I liked these better than his last novel, We Go Liquid.
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