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Best American Fantasy #3
Real Unreal
A city in a bottle. Kings. Genies. Jane Austen and Frankenstein. Grandmothers at sea . . . The acclaimed Best American Fantasy series continues with 20 stories chosen by best-selling writer Kevin Brockmeier. With stories by established writers, such as Peter S. Beagle, Laura Kasischke, Jeffrey Ford, and Lisa Goldstein, alongside tales by brilliant newcomers like Kellie Wells, Thomas Glave, Ryan Boudinot, and Rebecca Makkai, Real Unreal delivers a richly diverse experience of contemporary fiction. Guest editor Brockmeier knows fantasy inside and he is the recipient of three O. Henry Awards, the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award. His stories have been published widely, including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's, and The Oxford American, and have been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and the first volume of The Best American Fantasy.
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Kevin Brockmeier
40 books498 followersBorn and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Brockmeier received his MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1997. His stories have been featured in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Crazyhorse, and The Georgia Review. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Award, the Nelson Algren Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts grant.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 25, 2012
I love short story collections. They remind me of a Dmitri Martin joke. "My favorite fruit is grapes, because with grapes, you always get another chance. If you have a crappy grape, no problem. Just move on to the next one. Grapes: The fruit of hope."
Short story collections are like that. A dozen or two stories, some of them work for me and some don't. Real Unreal slants toward the magical realism end of the fantasy spectrum, where "fantasy" means dreamscapes, hallucinations, unexplained phenomenon, allegorical weirdness and a liberal deployment of the strange, the bizarre, the supernatural or the disturbing without any necessary anchor into the logic of the world.
Sometimes the effect is a little banal, and we're left with impressionistic stories that use fantasy to explore some abstract feeling. Some of the stories here ring naturalist--which sounds weird. Naturalistic fantasy? Stories like "Search Continues for an Elderly Man" and "The City and the Moon" are studies in character and mood where fantasy and the supernatural function more as paint brushes than plot devices.
My favorites of the bunch, and commentary:
1. Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke And The Angel - One of the very few stories here with a linear narrative--a beginning, middle and end, and an actual conflict between characters. A compelling yarn, not surprising from Peter S. Beagle
2. The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children - A distinct narrative voice, clear prose and an ironic sense of humor gave a lot of vigor to this story. I like vigor--to many stories in this collection lack that.
3. The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates - Stephen King is a master. I don't know quite how to describe his technique, but his prose is so precise, yet draws so little attention to itself, that I feel totally drawn into the story without even noticing my descent. Very compelling and haunting.
4. The King of the Djinn - Probably my favorite story, owing to my fascination with mythological allegories and the cleanliness of the narrative voice. Djinn deals with some powerful themes relating to religion, Islam, martyrdom and violence, but does so in a way that is unpretentious and sincere. I loved it.
5. Couple of Lovers on a Red Background - The narrator's voice here is just so clever, the storytelling so vibrant. I found myself smiling from beginning to end. I don't know why. It's not a happy story, but neither is it a sad one. There's something satirical about it, but without the heavy handed political motivations that accompany satire.
And these stories didn't work for me: They were either a little too lacking in conflict, or too preoccupied with formalism for my tastes:
Readers Guide, Pride and Prometheus, Torturer's Wife, For A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing.
But just because they didn't appeal to me is not to say they're bad stories. Short story collections are like bunches of grapes. You pick and choose. Short stories: the literature of hope?
Short story collections are like that. A dozen or two stories, some of them work for me and some don't. Real Unreal slants toward the magical realism end of the fantasy spectrum, where "fantasy" means dreamscapes, hallucinations, unexplained phenomenon, allegorical weirdness and a liberal deployment of the strange, the bizarre, the supernatural or the disturbing without any necessary anchor into the logic of the world.
Sometimes the effect is a little banal, and we're left with impressionistic stories that use fantasy to explore some abstract feeling. Some of the stories here ring naturalist--which sounds weird. Naturalistic fantasy? Stories like "Search Continues for an Elderly Man" and "The City and the Moon" are studies in character and mood where fantasy and the supernatural function more as paint brushes than plot devices.
My favorites of the bunch, and commentary:
1. Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke And The Angel - One of the very few stories here with a linear narrative--a beginning, middle and end, and an actual conflict between characters. A compelling yarn, not surprising from Peter S. Beagle
2. The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children - A distinct narrative voice, clear prose and an ironic sense of humor gave a lot of vigor to this story. I like vigor--to many stories in this collection lack that.
3. The New York Times At Special Bargain Rates - Stephen King is a master. I don't know quite how to describe his technique, but his prose is so precise, yet draws so little attention to itself, that I feel totally drawn into the story without even noticing my descent. Very compelling and haunting.
4. The King of the Djinn - Probably my favorite story, owing to my fascination with mythological allegories and the cleanliness of the narrative voice. Djinn deals with some powerful themes relating to religion, Islam, martyrdom and violence, but does so in a way that is unpretentious and sincere. I loved it.
5. Couple of Lovers on a Red Background - The narrator's voice here is just so clever, the storytelling so vibrant. I found myself smiling from beginning to end. I don't know why. It's not a happy story, but neither is it a sad one. There's something satirical about it, but without the heavy handed political motivations that accompany satire.
And these stories didn't work for me: They were either a little too lacking in conflict, or too preoccupied with formalism for my tastes:
Readers Guide, Pride and Prometheus, Torturer's Wife, For A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing.
But just because they didn't appeal to me is not to say they're bad stories. Short story collections are like bunches of grapes. You pick and choose. Short stories: the literature of hope?
December 5, 2016
Some fantastic, surreal little gems in this anthology.
January 28, 2021
‘Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy Volume 3’ contains twenty stories by various authors and even though I read them all (honest) the best review tactic is probably to pick out the highlights. There are damn few but here they are in page order.
‘Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel’ by Peter S. Beagle has trouble with the first sentence where, if you ask me, putting the last clause first would have saved having a clumsy hyphenated sub-clause in the middle. Nitpicking aside this long story, thirty-five pages, was brilliant. A blue angel appears in a painter’s studio and becomes his only model. He paints her for months on end, sometimes watched by his nephew, our narrator. It had nice touches of humour, some tragedy and a glorious ending.
‘The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children’ by Will Clarke is about the children of a second-rate superhero called Redbird. His only superpower is flight which isn’t that great so he is taken on as town superhero by Shreveport, Louisiana. It soon becomes clear he’s been busy with the ladies and he departs under a cloud but leaves many offspring behind. The trouble they cause is great entertainment.
‘Pride and Prometheus’ by John Kessel is the tale of one Mary Bennett, a young spinster, and her encounters in England with Victor Frankenstein, a disturbed gentleman from the continent. This is neatly tied in to Victor’s own story - the novel by Mary Shelley, not the various Hollywood versions. Perhaps because of my fondness for Victorian prose and manners, I found it quite agreeable.
‘Serials’ by Kate Williams is an amusing story about a high school girl trying to cope with the many serial killers around now that it has become such a popular pastime. She suspects her maths teacher may be one. An entertaining story leavened with spoof academic footnotes for the various information given on killers.
An honourable mention for ‘Rabbit Catcher of Kingdom Come’ by Kellie Wells for its lively language but this pied piper riff went on a bit too long. Stephen King delivers a pretty good yarn in ’The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates’. Chris Gavaler wrote ’Is’ and could give Mister King a run for his money when it comes to describing everyday life in excruciating detail. The story mentions therapy which marks it as truly American. It may surprise our cousins across the Atlantic to know that we British don’t all have therapists, not even the middle classes, though I felt I might need one after reading ‘The Torturer’s Wife’ by Thomas Glave. If I was a casual reader I would have given it up after four paragraphs but as a dutiful reviewer, I finished all thirty-three pages of this rambling, disjointed mish-mash (Oh so Arty, with lots of things in brackets) that is not really a fantasy. It’s a psychological story about the wife of a highly placed state torturer in a totalitarian regime cracking up with guilt. I highly recommend you avoid it like the plague.
Most of the other stories were okay but they lacked a certain something and after some consideration, I think I know what. Firstly, they did not lack fine writing. Finer writing has never been more evident and this is hardly surprising because nine of the contributors have Creative Writing degrees and five of those teach it. The list of contributing magazines at the back has many that are published by Universities.
Lacking was the classic notion of a story as commonly understood, namely a protagonist facing a series of challenges which he overcomes by dint of his character and which changes him in some way, usually for the better. In too many of these stories, something happens to someone and that’s it. This being modern urban fantasy the thing that happens is sometimes quite daft, like coughing up a little Bach who grows to full size, but never mind that. Many of the stories are mildly depressing. Perhaps they are meant to send you off to your analyst.
I find it all too arty, too academic, too refined. I also fear that a bright young Jewish chemistry student (Asimov) or a Navy midshipman retired with tuberculosis (Heinlein) or even an English graduate working in a laundry and writing in his spare time (Stephen King back in the day) would find it hard to break into this cosy world of writing professionals, polishing their prose to a high gloss, publishing each other in their little journals and awarding each other prizes. Writers used to have some life apart from writing, or at least had one before success. They had been doctors or biology professors or secret agents. If you go from school to writing degree to teaching writing might you not be too immersed in the stuff of fiction rather than the stuff of life? The other thing is that the general public don’t buy this sort of thing. They buy the three-volume fantasy novels with swords and elves and a hero who overcomes obstacles and gets changed by his troubles. I fear the fantasy short story has left the general reader behind, perhaps forever. Too bad.
‘Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel’ by Peter S. Beagle has trouble with the first sentence where, if you ask me, putting the last clause first would have saved having a clumsy hyphenated sub-clause in the middle. Nitpicking aside this long story, thirty-five pages, was brilliant. A blue angel appears in a painter’s studio and becomes his only model. He paints her for months on end, sometimes watched by his nephew, our narrator. It had nice touches of humour, some tragedy and a glorious ending.
‘The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children’ by Will Clarke is about the children of a second-rate superhero called Redbird. His only superpower is flight which isn’t that great so he is taken on as town superhero by Shreveport, Louisiana. It soon becomes clear he’s been busy with the ladies and he departs under a cloud but leaves many offspring behind. The trouble they cause is great entertainment.
‘Pride and Prometheus’ by John Kessel is the tale of one Mary Bennett, a young spinster, and her encounters in England with Victor Frankenstein, a disturbed gentleman from the continent. This is neatly tied in to Victor’s own story - the novel by Mary Shelley, not the various Hollywood versions. Perhaps because of my fondness for Victorian prose and manners, I found it quite agreeable.
‘Serials’ by Kate Williams is an amusing story about a high school girl trying to cope with the many serial killers around now that it has become such a popular pastime. She suspects her maths teacher may be one. An entertaining story leavened with spoof academic footnotes for the various information given on killers.
An honourable mention for ‘Rabbit Catcher of Kingdom Come’ by Kellie Wells for its lively language but this pied piper riff went on a bit too long. Stephen King delivers a pretty good yarn in ’The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates’. Chris Gavaler wrote ’Is’ and could give Mister King a run for his money when it comes to describing everyday life in excruciating detail. The story mentions therapy which marks it as truly American. It may surprise our cousins across the Atlantic to know that we British don’t all have therapists, not even the middle classes, though I felt I might need one after reading ‘The Torturer’s Wife’ by Thomas Glave. If I was a casual reader I would have given it up after four paragraphs but as a dutiful reviewer, I finished all thirty-three pages of this rambling, disjointed mish-mash (Oh so Arty, with lots of things in brackets) that is not really a fantasy. It’s a psychological story about the wife of a highly placed state torturer in a totalitarian regime cracking up with guilt. I highly recommend you avoid it like the plague.
Most of the other stories were okay but they lacked a certain something and after some consideration, I think I know what. Firstly, they did not lack fine writing. Finer writing has never been more evident and this is hardly surprising because nine of the contributors have Creative Writing degrees and five of those teach it. The list of contributing magazines at the back has many that are published by Universities.
Lacking was the classic notion of a story as commonly understood, namely a protagonist facing a series of challenges which he overcomes by dint of his character and which changes him in some way, usually for the better. In too many of these stories, something happens to someone and that’s it. This being modern urban fantasy the thing that happens is sometimes quite daft, like coughing up a little Bach who grows to full size, but never mind that. Many of the stories are mildly depressing. Perhaps they are meant to send you off to your analyst.
I find it all too arty, too academic, too refined. I also fear that a bright young Jewish chemistry student (Asimov) or a Navy midshipman retired with tuberculosis (Heinlein) or even an English graduate working in a laundry and writing in his spare time (Stephen King back in the day) would find it hard to break into this cosy world of writing professionals, polishing their prose to a high gloss, publishing each other in their little journals and awarding each other prizes. Writers used to have some life apart from writing, or at least had one before success. They had been doctors or biology professors or secret agents. If you go from school to writing degree to teaching writing might you not be too immersed in the stuff of fiction rather than the stuff of life? The other thing is that the general public don’t buy this sort of thing. They buy the three-volume fantasy novels with swords and elves and a hero who overcomes obstacles and gets changed by his troubles. I fear the fantasy short story has left the general reader behind, perhaps forever. Too bad.
April 8, 2024
If I had paid money for this, I would have been disappointed. It was a freebie from World Fantasy 2011 in San Diego; yes, it took 13 years to get around to reading it. It’s mostly a bland collection, enlivened by a handful of genuinely decent stories. The best from my standpoint is Peter S. Beagle’s “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” involving an unfaithful painter and an uncertain angel, with a genuinely growing relationship with the potential to save, or ruin, them both.
There are two good gimmicky stories here, by authors who understand that gimmicks have limited lifespans and must be put to bed very quickly. Lisa Goldstein’s “Reader’s Guide” is written not as the story itself but as the series of book club questions used to entice women’s book clubs to choose the book for their next meeting. In the middle it becomes a supernatural rendition of how these questions are created and then ends on a completely mundane and almost Asimovish shaggy dog question.
John Kesel’s “Pride and Prometheus” is a mashup of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and, of course, Pride and Prejudice. It ends up being a sort of low-rent Possession, but being a low-rent A. S. Byatt is not a bad place to be at all. I could not have taken a full novel of this, but a short story? It’s the perfect place for such a mashup. It takes enough time to focus on the results of the combination and no more.
These two take the gimmick, run with it, and when it’s about to tire, end it, making very good stories that could have turned tedious very quickly.
Paul G. Tremblay’s “The Two-Headed Girl” is about a girl who has an extra head—that changes between famous women mostly of the past at random times, sometimes staying long enough for a conversation, sometimes not. It’s a decent idea and also an example of how the right ending can elevate a story. This, along with “Uncle Chaim” and “Reader’s Guide” are my top three for this collection.
Runner-up is Stephen King’s “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates”, which, like many Stephen King stories, can’t really be described without giving it away.
What’s amazing to me is just how bland the collection as a whole is. Normally I’d be fine with a collection with only five worthwhile stories in it. I’d put it on my shelf and maybe occasionally come back to those standouts. That’s how collections usually work. “There’s something for everyone” is the cliché. But usually the other stories include something memorable, failed attempts to reach the stars, some striving at something good. This is like some weird artifact of a dystopian alternate world where striving is old-fashioned and maybe even gauche, with most of the stories shaming the standouts for their standing out.
There are two good gimmicky stories here, by authors who understand that gimmicks have limited lifespans and must be put to bed very quickly. Lisa Goldstein’s “Reader’s Guide” is written not as the story itself but as the series of book club questions used to entice women’s book clubs to choose the book for their next meeting. In the middle it becomes a supernatural rendition of how these questions are created and then ends on a completely mundane and almost Asimovish shaggy dog question.
John Kesel’s “Pride and Prometheus” is a mashup of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and, of course, Pride and Prejudice. It ends up being a sort of low-rent Possession, but being a low-rent A. S. Byatt is not a bad place to be at all. I could not have taken a full novel of this, but a short story? It’s the perfect place for such a mashup. It takes enough time to focus on the results of the combination and no more.
These two take the gimmick, run with it, and when it’s about to tire, end it, making very good stories that could have turned tedious very quickly.
Paul G. Tremblay’s “The Two-Headed Girl” is about a girl who has an extra head—that changes between famous women mostly of the past at random times, sometimes staying long enough for a conversation, sometimes not. It’s a decent idea and also an example of how the right ending can elevate a story. This, along with “Uncle Chaim” and “Reader’s Guide” are my top three for this collection.
Runner-up is Stephen King’s “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates”, which, like many Stephen King stories, can’t really be described without giving it away.
What’s amazing to me is just how bland the collection as a whole is. Normally I’d be fine with a collection with only five worthwhile stories in it. I’d put it on my shelf and maybe occasionally come back to those standouts. That’s how collections usually work. “There’s something for everyone” is the cliché. But usually the other stories include something memorable, failed attempts to reach the stars, some striving at something good. This is like some weird artifact of a dystopian alternate world where striving is old-fashioned and maybe even gauche, with most of the stories shaming the standouts for their standing out.
June 17, 2010
I have to say upfront that the modern "literary" short story leaves me cold. It seems to me that the authors put the frame down at random, that it makes no difference where they begin or end the story, that nothing happens and nothing changes.
Thus, you could easily have predicted that my opinion of a book of fantasy stories would not be improved by choosing the stories with an eye toward this "literary" ideal.
There are twenty stories in this collection. Thomas Glave's "The Torturer's Wife" I rejected immediately for having the word "torturer" in the title, because I have a squick; Kellie Wells' "Rabbit Catcher of Kingdom Come" I abandoned halfway through because it was so overloaded with adjective, metaphor, self-consciously cute construction, winking ruralism, that it was like trying to walk through a living room where every inch is covered with knicknacks.
I did finish the other eighteen, though, and that's a pretty good record for a book of short stories.
However. For nearly all the stories here, the most obvious, most convincing, most easily supportable reading is "It's all symbolic, ya bunch of illiterates." The ghost? the giant mechanical heart? the mysteriously reanimated figure of J.S. Bach? All symbolic. Nothing more going on here than (respectively) grief & guilt, alienation from one's emotions, and grief & guilt.
Let me pause for a resounding yawn.
I liked the idea of John Kessel's "Pride and Prometheus." Elizabeth Bennet's bluestocking sister Mary meets Victor Frankenstein: how great is that? Unfortunately, it doesn't really add up to much. A few conversations, a disappointed crush, the good doctor moves on in pursuit of his creature, and Mary is pretty much in the same place where she was when the story started.
I liked Peter Beagle's "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel," though Uncle Chaim never said a word that I couldn't hear in Walter Matthau's voice.
And Katie Williams' "Serials" (a romp in a world in which being a serial killer is a valid lifestyle choice) was very slight, but rather funny.
Thus, you could easily have predicted that my opinion of a book of fantasy stories would not be improved by choosing the stories with an eye toward this "literary" ideal.
There are twenty stories in this collection. Thomas Glave's "The Torturer's Wife" I rejected immediately for having the word "torturer" in the title, because I have a squick; Kellie Wells' "Rabbit Catcher of Kingdom Come" I abandoned halfway through because it was so overloaded with adjective, metaphor, self-consciously cute construction, winking ruralism, that it was like trying to walk through a living room where every inch is covered with knicknacks.
I did finish the other eighteen, though, and that's a pretty good record for a book of short stories.
However. For nearly all the stories here, the most obvious, most convincing, most easily supportable reading is "It's all symbolic, ya bunch of illiterates." The ghost? the giant mechanical heart? the mysteriously reanimated figure of J.S. Bach? All symbolic. Nothing more going on here than (respectively) grief & guilt, alienation from one's emotions, and grief & guilt.
Let me pause for a resounding yawn.
I liked the idea of John Kessel's "Pride and Prometheus." Elizabeth Bennet's bluestocking sister Mary meets Victor Frankenstein: how great is that? Unfortunately, it doesn't really add up to much. A few conversations, a disappointed crush, the good doctor moves on in pursuit of his creature, and Mary is pretty much in the same place where she was when the story started.
I liked Peter Beagle's "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel," though Uncle Chaim never said a word that I couldn't hear in Walter Matthau's voice.
And Katie Williams' "Serials" (a romp in a world in which being a serial killer is a valid lifestyle choice) was very slight, but rather funny.
December 13, 2011
I've been thinking a lot lately about the (arbitrary) distinction between "literary" and "genre" fiction, with the realization of how far I've fallen from my onetime literary snobbishness. Mostly what I've been thinking can be summed up by this. Which is to say that I'm a little irked by Kevin Brockmeier (a fantasy writer "passing" for literary (and whose The Brief History of the Dead I adore)) assembling a collection of stories so obviously aimed at squeamish literary readers who want to go slumming without getting lost.
In his introduction Brockmeier makes arguments for two of the stories as fantasy (two of my favorites, by the way: Jeffrey Ford's "Daltharee" and Katie Williams's "Serials"), neither of which I have the least argument with. Many of the others, though (particularly "Is," "The Torturer's Wife" (which also adds to my--unrelated--vow never to read anything titled "The ____'s Wife" again), "The City and the Moon," and "The Two-Headed Girl"), strike me as blatantly literary tales, in which even if the fantastical element is presented as real it seems unnecessary or little more than a metaphor--more magical realism than fantasy, perhaps, a distinction I wasn't even sure I understood until reading this collection. In some of the stories, I was sincerely afraid that they would end with the character waking from a dream.
It's not that I'm opposed to taking literary readers by the hand and guiding them into the rich world of fantasy. It's that by and large the stories in this collection reflect what I find irritating about literary works--mainly a seemingly arbitrary dropping of the frame that declares stories finished while I'm still trying to figure out why I should care about the characters and their run-of-the-mill problems. In short, though some of them are great, these are not the Best American Fantasy stories.
In his introduction Brockmeier makes arguments for two of the stories as fantasy (two of my favorites, by the way: Jeffrey Ford's "Daltharee" and Katie Williams's "Serials"), neither of which I have the least argument with. Many of the others, though (particularly "Is," "The Torturer's Wife" (which also adds to my--unrelated--vow never to read anything titled "The ____'s Wife" again), "The City and the Moon," and "The Two-Headed Girl"), strike me as blatantly literary tales, in which even if the fantastical element is presented as real it seems unnecessary or little more than a metaphor--more magical realism than fantasy, perhaps, a distinction I wasn't even sure I understood until reading this collection. In some of the stories, I was sincerely afraid that they would end with the character waking from a dream.
It's not that I'm opposed to taking literary readers by the hand and guiding them into the rich world of fantasy. It's that by and large the stories in this collection reflect what I find irritating about literary works--mainly a seemingly arbitrary dropping of the frame that declares stories finished while I'm still trying to figure out why I should care about the characters and their run-of-the-mill problems. In short, though some of them are great, these are not the Best American Fantasy stories.
February 2, 2010
There are several excellent stories in this collection, and only one or two I found disappointing. Maybe the best compliment I can give Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3: prior to reading it, I'd only heard of 4 of the 20 authors, but after finishing it, more than half of them are firmly on my watch list. You won't find dragons, elves or sexy vampires here, but if you're interested in checking out some truly excellent stories that show how varied fantasy as a genre can be, give Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3 a try.
The entire review can be read here: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/zzas...
The entire review can be read here: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/zzas...
April 25, 2010
Some great stories here.
Safe Passage by Ramona Ausubel, about passing into death?
Uncle Chaim, Aunt Rifke and the Angel by Peter S. Beagle, an artist an Angel and a young boy learn about life.
The Torturer's Wife by Thomas Glave, a descent into madness?
Serials by Katie Williams, a funny and scary story about serial killers and teenage girls.
A non horror Stephen King story, The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates.
Overall, a very good book.
Safe Passage by Ramona Ausubel, about passing into death?
Uncle Chaim, Aunt Rifke and the Angel by Peter S. Beagle, an artist an Angel and a young boy learn about life.
The Torturer's Wife by Thomas Glave, a descent into madness?
Serials by Katie Williams, a funny and scary story about serial killers and teenage girls.
A non horror Stephen King story, The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates.
Overall, a very good book.
February 12, 2010
"The Torturer's Wife", by Thomas Glave, is AWESOME. I've still got 2 stories left to read in this collection, but I think I can safely say this is a great anthology (and duh! Kevin Brockmeier editing kinda guaranteed that) and that it's led me to a few new writers I'll definitely be checking out more of.
May 16, 2010
Surprisingly good. I wouldn't have called myself a fantasy fan, but if this is what fantasy is, then I guess I am one. Don't let the cover or the stupid subtitle turn you off. No elves or lost swords in this collection. My favorites: Safe Passage, Cardiology, Reader's Guide, Rabbit Catcher of Kingdom Come, and Serials.
July 31, 2010
Almost all the stories were AMAZING, just a few I didn't like.
Read
November 23, 2010This was really great! A big variety of things that can be labeled "fantasy."
August 1, 2017
Winners and losers as one should expect. The story I enjoyed most, and which I keep thinking about, is The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children, by Will Clarke. It was not only surprisingly hilarious, but also managed to be original, engaging, and imaginative. The story I can not for life of me even begin to comprehend why it was included is called The Torturer's Wife, by Thomas Glave. I actually tore it out of my copy and threw it out. My suggestion is to skip it and move on, as it is a long and unworthy investment. I also thought it leaned away from fantasy, and rather belonged in horror.....but certainly it was the misfit in this collection.
The rest of the tales are more or less okay. The last 2 in the book I ended up not finishing, as they failed to engage me. Cardiology was an intriguing set-up, but I felt it didn't really pay off the way it could have. Pride and Prometheus, and The Two-Headed Girl, were both better than I thought they might be when I began them, and I'm really glad they were included in this collection. The King of the Djinn took an interesting take on a fairly modern, yet still fantastical situation, and I feel like it could even be interesting to see the tale fleshed out into a longer format.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews