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A Weird Reader's Book Review of "Best American Fantasy"

9/24/2018

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"A cabinet of dark wonders, and an important--no, a crucial--map of the richness and strangeness and startling range of the modern American short story." 

~Michael Chabon

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Michael Chabon's blurb on the front cover sums up this story collection well:

"A cabinet of dark wonders, and an important--no, a crucial--map of the richness and strangeness and startling range of the modern American short story."

Dark wonders, surreal and often terrifyingly handsome; beautifully quirky and so damn fun. This was my "bathroom book" for many months, but I can't recommend it as a bathroom book.The reason is that there are some long stories in here. But they ALL worth reading. 

I recommend it for the bus or train, or for curling up on the sofa, or as a before bedtime read. 

Here is a list of my favorite stories from the book:
  • ​A Hard Truth About Waste Management, by Sumanth Prabhaker
    • ​Flushing your trash down the toilet will piss off whatever lives there. Bad idea. 
  • The Whipping, by Julia Elliot
    • Weird parents, weirder children, and mutant neighbors. A strange girl awaiting punishment narrates this oddity.
  • A Better Angel, by Chris Adrian
    • Hauntingly beautiful. 
  • Draco Compestris, by Sarah Monette
    • Because dragon skeletons and strange children nobody sees (or maybe they just don't want to). 
  • The Chinese Boy, by Ann Stapleton
    • A Rear Window type story with a paralyzed man and his daughter who witness a bank teller's descent to attempted suicide, a shared madness of all three. 
  • First Kisses from Beyond the Grave, by Nik Houser
    • High school for the dead. But not the anime.
  • A Troop [Sic] of Baboons, by Tyler Smith
    • Baboons finally gain sentience and what do they do? CHAOS THEATER. Well, that's what I call it. 
  • Pieces of Scheherazade, by Nicole Kornher-Stace
    • I love Nicole Kornher-Stace's work.Her book Archivist Wasp was one of my favorite books of 2017-2018. I finished reading it at the first of the year. Her contribution to this anthology is a retelling of the Thousand and One Nights story, with tattoos. 
  • The Man Who Married a Tree, by Tony D'Souza
    • I call this weird backwoods (quite literally) fiction. It made me think there should be a lumberpunk genre.
  • A Fable with Slips of White Paper, by Kevin Brockmeier
    • Imagine going to a thrift store and buying the overcoat that used to belong to God. It's like that. 
  • Lazy Taekos, by Geoffrey A. Landis
    • Lazy Taekos is not so good with his hands, and he is lazy, but he has a trick and a riddle or two up his sleeve. Will it be enough to win him the princess? 
  • Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot, by Daniel Alarcon.
    • An alternate history that imagines a modern era where Abraham Lincoln was president and still assassinated. Lived through the recollections and grief of his male lover as his current relationship is ending. Poignant and strange. 
​This is an older collection, published in 2007. It is edited by fantasy master Jeff VanderMeer and his wife, Ann VanderMeer. 

I picked up a used copy of this book on Amazon for about five bucks, Unfortunately, there is no Kindle edition. It's well worth grabbing a used copy of this great weird as fuck little anthology for your bedside or commuter reading pleasure. 
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