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Love is Strange: Stories of Postmodern Romance
These diverse and original and sometimes thoroughly outrageous talents present love stories that range from the tender to the abrasive, the sunny to the darkly sexual, the poignant to the savagely ironic. Love is Strange proves that an era of safe sex can still produce dangerous and exhilarating art about the universal experience of romance. What is this thing called love? And where has it gone in contemporary fiction? Do “serious” young writers still attempt love stories? If they do, are the tales they tell drenched in cynicism or tenderness? Is modern love about intimacy, or desire, or obsession, or simple hard-edged attitude? Or all of the above? Love is Strange answers these questions by collecting work from sixteen writers who prowl the edges of human experience and literary form to evoke the landscape of American love from deepest downtown New York and decadent California to politically correct campuses and surreal suburbia.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
314 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 21, 2025
As this is a compilation of short stories, I'm going to review them individually.
“Bitter love” by Lynne McFall: it was fine. A story about a woman losing an eye and getting over her Ex boyfriend. The prose read like a stream of consciousness. It was ok but I don’t remember much of it. 5/10
“Order and flux in Northampton” by David Foster Wallace: an awkward cross eyed man who has a crush on a random woman and tries to do something about it. This was terribly painful to get through. Way to wordy, packed with worthless boring padding that added nothing, and it rambled on and on. I hate using the term but it had purple prose. The author was almost entirely concerned with how “artistically” they could stretch out a very uninteresting story. The female love interest and her male friend’s names were WAY to similar and I keep mixing them up. The ending was very abrupt. I was confused from beginning to end. It hurt to read. It’s one of the worst stories I’ve ever read. 1/10
“A Real Doll” by A M Homes: A story about a teen boy “dating” and having sex with his little sister’s Barbie doll. Barbie is drugged with Valium, has her toes bitten off by the little sister, is decapitated, ejaculated on, and more. There’s also a bit of sort of ‘vore’, where the main character puts Barbie’s head in his mouth for seemingly no reason, and later sucks on her legs and comments how it feels “for her to be inside him”. He eventually stops playing with her when he finds out that his sister sawed Barbie’s breasts off. The story gets very weird and very very gross. Despite that, this is actually one of my favorites in the collection. It really speaks to the unhinged hornyness of the teenage sexual fantasy. 6/10
“Everybody got their own idea of home” by Barry Gifford: two stories side by side, one about the quiet life of an ordinary man and the other about two serial killer lesbians. At the end the stories collide and the man is presumably murdered. He was targeted at random and didn’t deserve his fate in the slightest. The story was very unpleasant, aiming mostly to upset and having almost nothing to do with love. Lots of prostitution, rape incest, and murder. I feel sad and gross just thinking about it. 2/10
“Yellow Rose” by William T Vollmann: a story about a white guy falling in love with a Korean woman. And having sex with her, and getting engaged. And doing drugs. A pretty normal love story compared to the others. Other than the outdated racial language this was whatever. It rambled in places but it didn’t go on forever like “Order and Flux in Northampton”. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t like it. I wasn’t interested in it. It was long and reading it felt like walking through mud. 4/10
“The Blackman’s gide to seducing white women with the amazing power of voodoo” by Doctor Snakeskin: shockingly I actually liked this. It’s a very 70’s, very black dude describing techniques for picking up white women, both practical and magical. The prose are casual and direct, and the story is short (thank god) and straightforward. On the second page the narrator mentioned incense, so I put the book down, lit a stick of Nag-Champa, and continued reading. I think it definitely enhanced the experience. This is the only story so far I would be willing to read again. 6/10
“Calista” by Trey Ellis: a story told in diary format about a guy pinning for a girl. It’s a pretty basic early 80’s love story. I feel like the only reason it was in here was because the couple was interracial. It’s been a few days since I read it and i have forgotten most of it. Meh 5/10
“Love letter to my rapist” by Lisa Blaushild: the story is exactly what the title says. It didn’t do anything for me. This story really could have used some paragraphs. It wasn’t painful to read, I just wanted to get through it and move on. At least it was very short. 4/10
“Breaking up with Roger” by David B Feinberg: A story about the messy brake up between two gay men in living admits the AIDS crisis the year 1989. It was more a set of related thoughts, or answers to questions the narrator is asking himself than a proper narrative story. It was mostly fine. 5/10
“Shifter” by Lynne Tillman: a story about an American woman and her short lived romance with a Eropean man. The prose are long and rambling, The peragraphs were very long and the dialogue was almost never tagged. I sped through this and didn’t try to get invested. The story was full of meaning and intilectalisum and emotions I didn’t bother trying to understand. 4/10
“The Kid” by Daytona Beach: a bored, cynical 35 year old woman having pedofilic desires for underage boys, one of which is her friend’s 14 year old son. It was a painful read. Fortunately the sex scenes were kept vague, and the story was pretty short so it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. 3/10
“My mother” by Kathy Acker: a long, rambling, confusing story about a messy woman who is wild, angry, and doesn’t know who she is. It was full of “deep philosophical and emotional meaning”, personal rage and confusion, anger at the American state, war, and the world in general. This is one of the worst ones. It hurt to read. The ending was very abrupt. It repeated the same points over and over. I didn’t like the formatting. The meaning seems to be that nothing matters, and America/war is bad. I think this would appeal to a very angry woman (which I am not so I hated it). 2/10
“From the diaries of a wolf boy” by David Wojnarowicz: A story about a gay drifter disillusioned with modernity, couch hopping and hanging out with various partners. Themes of homophobia both internal and external. This was ok. It was emotional but not worthy of an eye roll. I liked some of the prose. 5/10
“The real McCoy” by Catherine Texier: A story about a French lady and an American man getting into a relationship. I liked this ok, there were themes of having your idealized vision of something/someone shatter, and how to deal with the reality. It had an uncertainty to it like a lot of the other stories, but it wasn’t cynical and satirized the “deep artistic” ness that had me rolling my eyes in the other stories. 6/10
“Mrs. Vaughan” by Patrick McGrath: a young doctor falling in love with an older married woman. I didn’t like how the woman was only ever referred to as “your mother”. Eww. It was short, abrupt and unsatisfying. More boring and pointless than activity bad. 4/10
“Love’s labors lost” by Joel Rose: this wins the award for worst opening paragraph in the book, or perhaps in the world. The story itself is about a poverty stricken 50 year old man and his 70 year old Common law wife, whom he calls “mommy”. They meet when the woman was 23 and the man was 9. Eww. As the woman becomes ill, the man gets back into drugs, and behaves in an erratic and violent manner. Lots of poverty and drug use. One of the better stories, it has the same appeal to me as the shows “Homicide Hunter” and “Hoarders”. 6/10
This book was out of my comfort zone and overall a disappointment. A few of the stories were fascinatingly weird/gross but most were mediocre or bad. A few were REALLY bad. I learned that postmodern philosophy isn’t for me, I was groaning and rolling my eyes whenever this book was attempting to be deep and meaningful. The themes it was trying to get across didn’t connect with me. The experience wasn’t a complete waste, I explored something new, and learned from it. If your interested in postmodernism or want to read atypical, grungy, messy love stories, then you might like this, but as for me I’m going to avoid this type of stuff in the future.
Overall ranking 3/10
The stories I liked: The Blackman’s guide to seducing white women, The real McCoy, A Real Doll, Love’s labors lost.
The stories that were mid: From the diaries of a wolf boy, Breaking up with Roger, Calista, Bitter Love.
The stories i didn’t like: Mrs. Vaughan, Shifter, Yellow Rose, Love letter to my rapist, The Kid.
The stories I really didn’t like: My mother, Everybody got their own idea of home
The story that I HATED: Order and Flux in Northampton
“Bitter love” by Lynne McFall: it was fine. A story about a woman losing an eye and getting over her Ex boyfriend. The prose read like a stream of consciousness. It was ok but I don’t remember much of it. 5/10
“Order and flux in Northampton” by David Foster Wallace: an awkward cross eyed man who has a crush on a random woman and tries to do something about it. This was terribly painful to get through. Way to wordy, packed with worthless boring padding that added nothing, and it rambled on and on. I hate using the term but it had purple prose. The author was almost entirely concerned with how “artistically” they could stretch out a very uninteresting story. The female love interest and her male friend’s names were WAY to similar and I keep mixing them up. The ending was very abrupt. I was confused from beginning to end. It hurt to read. It’s one of the worst stories I’ve ever read. 1/10
“A Real Doll” by A M Homes: A story about a teen boy “dating” and having sex with his little sister’s Barbie doll. Barbie is drugged with Valium, has her toes bitten off by the little sister, is decapitated, ejaculated on, and more. There’s also a bit of sort of ‘vore’, where the main character puts Barbie’s head in his mouth for seemingly no reason, and later sucks on her legs and comments how it feels “for her to be inside him”. He eventually stops playing with her when he finds out that his sister sawed Barbie’s breasts off. The story gets very weird and very very gross. Despite that, this is actually one of my favorites in the collection. It really speaks to the unhinged hornyness of the teenage sexual fantasy. 6/10
“Everybody got their own idea of home” by Barry Gifford: two stories side by side, one about the quiet life of an ordinary man and the other about two serial killer lesbians. At the end the stories collide and the man is presumably murdered. He was targeted at random and didn’t deserve his fate in the slightest. The story was very unpleasant, aiming mostly to upset and having almost nothing to do with love. Lots of prostitution, rape incest, and murder. I feel sad and gross just thinking about it. 2/10
“Yellow Rose” by William T Vollmann: a story about a white guy falling in love with a Korean woman. And having sex with her, and getting engaged. And doing drugs. A pretty normal love story compared to the others. Other than the outdated racial language this was whatever. It rambled in places but it didn’t go on forever like “Order and Flux in Northampton”. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t like it. I wasn’t interested in it. It was long and reading it felt like walking through mud. 4/10
“The Blackman’s gide to seducing white women with the amazing power of voodoo” by Doctor Snakeskin: shockingly I actually liked this. It’s a very 70’s, very black dude describing techniques for picking up white women, both practical and magical. The prose are casual and direct, and the story is short (thank god) and straightforward. On the second page the narrator mentioned incense, so I put the book down, lit a stick of Nag-Champa, and continued reading. I think it definitely enhanced the experience. This is the only story so far I would be willing to read again. 6/10
“Calista” by Trey Ellis: a story told in diary format about a guy pinning for a girl. It’s a pretty basic early 80’s love story. I feel like the only reason it was in here was because the couple was interracial. It’s been a few days since I read it and i have forgotten most of it. Meh 5/10
“Love letter to my rapist” by Lisa Blaushild: the story is exactly what the title says. It didn’t do anything for me. This story really could have used some paragraphs. It wasn’t painful to read, I just wanted to get through it and move on. At least it was very short. 4/10
“Breaking up with Roger” by David B Feinberg: A story about the messy brake up between two gay men in living admits the AIDS crisis the year 1989. It was more a set of related thoughts, or answers to questions the narrator is asking himself than a proper narrative story. It was mostly fine. 5/10
“Shifter” by Lynne Tillman: a story about an American woman and her short lived romance with a Eropean man. The prose are long and rambling, The peragraphs were very long and the dialogue was almost never tagged. I sped through this and didn’t try to get invested. The story was full of meaning and intilectalisum and emotions I didn’t bother trying to understand. 4/10
“The Kid” by Daytona Beach: a bored, cynical 35 year old woman having pedofilic desires for underage boys, one of which is her friend’s 14 year old son. It was a painful read. Fortunately the sex scenes were kept vague, and the story was pretty short so it wasn’t as painful as it could have been. 3/10
“My mother” by Kathy Acker: a long, rambling, confusing story about a messy woman who is wild, angry, and doesn’t know who she is. It was full of “deep philosophical and emotional meaning”, personal rage and confusion, anger at the American state, war, and the world in general. This is one of the worst ones. It hurt to read. The ending was very abrupt. It repeated the same points over and over. I didn’t like the formatting. The meaning seems to be that nothing matters, and America/war is bad. I think this would appeal to a very angry woman (which I am not so I hated it). 2/10
“From the diaries of a wolf boy” by David Wojnarowicz: A story about a gay drifter disillusioned with modernity, couch hopping and hanging out with various partners. Themes of homophobia both internal and external. This was ok. It was emotional but not worthy of an eye roll. I liked some of the prose. 5/10
“The real McCoy” by Catherine Texier: A story about a French lady and an American man getting into a relationship. I liked this ok, there were themes of having your idealized vision of something/someone shatter, and how to deal with the reality. It had an uncertainty to it like a lot of the other stories, but it wasn’t cynical and satirized the “deep artistic” ness that had me rolling my eyes in the other stories. 6/10
“Mrs. Vaughan” by Patrick McGrath: a young doctor falling in love with an older married woman. I didn’t like how the woman was only ever referred to as “your mother”. Eww. It was short, abrupt and unsatisfying. More boring and pointless than activity bad. 4/10
“Love’s labors lost” by Joel Rose: this wins the award for worst opening paragraph in the book, or perhaps in the world. The story itself is about a poverty stricken 50 year old man and his 70 year old Common law wife, whom he calls “mommy”. They meet when the woman was 23 and the man was 9. Eww. As the woman becomes ill, the man gets back into drugs, and behaves in an erratic and violent manner. Lots of poverty and drug use. One of the better stories, it has the same appeal to me as the shows “Homicide Hunter” and “Hoarders”. 6/10
This book was out of my comfort zone and overall a disappointment. A few of the stories were fascinatingly weird/gross but most were mediocre or bad. A few were REALLY bad. I learned that postmodern philosophy isn’t for me, I was groaning and rolling my eyes whenever this book was attempting to be deep and meaningful. The themes it was trying to get across didn’t connect with me. The experience wasn’t a complete waste, I explored something new, and learned from it. If your interested in postmodernism or want to read atypical, grungy, messy love stories, then you might like this, but as for me I’m going to avoid this type of stuff in the future.
Overall ranking 3/10
The stories I liked: The Blackman’s guide to seducing white women, The real McCoy, A Real Doll, Love’s labors lost.
The stories that were mid: From the diaries of a wolf boy, Breaking up with Roger, Calista, Bitter Love.
The stories i didn’t like: Mrs. Vaughan, Shifter, Yellow Rose, Love letter to my rapist, The Kid.
The stories I really didn’t like: My mother, Everybody got their own idea of home
The story that I HATED: Order and Flux in Northampton
October 11, 2010
Would have been five stars if not for so many stories reprinted from other anthologies. Extremely strong collection.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews