Spider Pie

by Alyssa Sturgill

Recipe for Spider Pie: blend 2 cups of dark humor with a healthy dash of oddity, add a pinch of ground freak's ear and 2 tsp of secret desires. Bake until your neighbors start complaning about the smell. In her debut book Alyssa Sturgill firmly establishes herself as the enfant terrible of contemporary surrealism. Laden with gothic horror sensibilities, Spider Pie is a one-way trip down a rabbit hole inhabited by sexual deviants and friendly monsters, fairytale beginnings and hideous endings.

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Horror

104 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 2005

Reviews

[Anthony Chavez · Rating 4 out of 5]

An action packed punched to the gut. Alyssa really embodies the phrase, "All Killer and No Filler" in this collection of stories. I mean seriously how many people do you know, or authors, can cram 24 little vignettes/stories into 1 book under 100 pages? ONE - Alyssa Sturgill.

A great little amalgamation of great stories you can read during any short breaks of your day. Standouts to me being: No.5 Simian Place, Beware of Kittens, Love Samurai, We Twins, etc. But they were all great, not a dud in the mix. There was funny, BIZARRE, gross, poetic, sleazy, and so much more.

Great little snippets and glimpses into the authors bizarro mind, a great introduction to the genre for non-bizarro readers. 4.5 Stars!

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was really impressed by this collection of short stories. Alyssa leaves out the filler, accomplishing in a few pages what it would normally take an entire novel to achieve.

In one of my favorite stories, "Beware of Kitten" the protagonist's mother gives birth to a litter of kittens after her daughter is late for curfew. Most authors would feel that this clever idea satisfies their quota for uniqueness in a story and give us pages and pages of boring quirkiness about life with this unusual family. But Alyssa goes behind that - she has the protagonist buy a basket for her new siblings; a basket that is haunted by the ghost of a victim of the French Revolution who seems like a nice guy at first, but soon brainwashes the kittens into doing unspeakable things.

This book has lots of gore and lots of laughs. Alyssa possesses an extraordinary imagination, which is what I really look for in a book.

[Missy (myweereads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cinderella wears her widow veil, Weeping Beauty screams and wails, Scariel haunts the nightmare deep, Snow Blight drinks your blood as you sleep.”

Alyssa Sturgill in her collection delivers on the bizarre and unusual with her short stories. These are a one-way trip down a rabbit hole inhabited by sexual deviants and friendly monsters, fairytale beginnings and hideous endings.

This collections was unpredictable and extremely strange. Each brings a sense of surrealism, some were quite short and no more than two pages long.

These were dark and funny. The humour with the twisted endings made this a good wee one for in-between other reads.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this in preparation for a craft seminar I was teaching on magical realism. Spider Pie and all the bizarro writing I consumed was absurdist, amateurish garbage.

[Edmund Colell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Spider Pie, Alyssa Sturgill displays that, given a pile of LEGOs, she would probably construct a wife-beater-wearing drag king pixie that's constipated with cyanide capsules. And not one detail would look misplaced. And we could even see each and every piece of cyanide. The point being: Sturgill treats reality very much like LEGOs. Her characters weep needles (and cough razorblades), raise Cthulhu-spawn, work their disposable hands to create sanitizing products out of tears, and become pregnant with kittens, televisions, and possibly even the entire population of Neo-Atlantis (had there been another story involving pregnancy).
But in addition to making these props, costumes, and fuctions, Sturgill molds them all together in plot dollops that fit each story very well. The woman who produces sharp objects as bodily fluids is on a date with Elizabeth Bathory, and their evening plays out much like a standard awkward first date (also used as a trope in the later story "Love Samurai"), with one of the spicy details making me jealous of Clementine for getting to stick a finger down Elizabeth's throat, a level of intimacy I could never reach. Children are framed for the murder of their parents by storybook characters, the moral of which contains a sour truth. A hinged woman sells her body and becomes a reusable container until the other half of the relationship becomes the used one, and I empathize with that bitter reciprocity. All three of these stories don't last very long, nor do any of the other stories in this compilation. What matters is that they succeed at being compelling and endearing. Endearing through each crusty spot of blood.
As a result, I can't think of any complaints. If there were any, they were immediately glazed over by the overall blood-ink-LEGOflesh presentation. Spider Pie's chunks and crusts and filling may turn away those without adventurous tastes. Oh well, more for the rest of us.

[Kretch · Rating 1 out of 5]

To me this is a bad attempt at being "weird". I only read 3 stories and all three were terrible. As a major fan of Mellick also a Jeremy Robert Johnson fan this book holds no candle. The stories were very randomly written almost like she herself did not know where she was going to go with the story's. Very disappointed after reading so many positive reviews.

[Sam (Hissing Potatoes) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggle with short stories, and this volume is no different. On a line-by-line level, the writing and imagery were mostly good with the promised bizarre atmosphere. Some stories had a clear theme or purpose that made them interesting. But I didn't get most stories, and going through the often gross imagery without purpose doesn't work for me. Overall the volume fell flat.

[Screamingbutterfly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very darkly comical book. Lots of strangeness and unpredictability. I absolutely loved it. I let my sister read it and she loved it. She let her friends see it and they tried to steal it. The stories are very short and enjoyable. My only disappointment is that there weren't more stories in it.

[Christy Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

So punchy it'll break a rib.

As a collection of short stories some are better than others but unlike other books, none left me wanting. The added charm is that each story takes about the same amount of time to read that a healthy bowel movement takes to drop so it's perfect for le toilette.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quirky and weird in all the right places. Dark, funny and twisted at the same time.

Note: I edited this book