Author: Amelia Gray

Type of Book: Fiction, short story collection, flash fiction, bizarro, gently weird

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Because the stories, if not technically classified as bizarro, are bizarro nonetheless. And when they aren’t bizarro, they are gently weird.  Sometimes outright weird.

Availability: Published by The University of Alabama Press in 2010, you can get a copy here:

Comments: I have a favorable disposition toward women named Amelia. I knew a girl in high school named Amelia Beebe and she was one of the most interesting people in high school, but whitebread suburban high school experiences being what they are, I don’t think she and others realized it. I also have a favorable disposition toward those who love cats and the first entry I saw on Gray’s blog was a discussion of losing a kitty to feline leukemia. We lost a kitty to the dread disease and my heart bled for her, reading that entry.

Lest you think I am going to give this book a favorable review because of my various favorable dispositions, please note that I did not know about the cats before I started writing this review, and already had my opinion about the book pretty well formed. Of course I knew her name is Amelia before I began discussing the book, but since I can find it in myself to detest writers with my own name, her name played into my decision calculus hardly at all.

It is her writing that ensured a rave review. Fanciful, strange, unsettling, oddly sweet, vaguely sickening, amusingly awkward, Gray has a writing style that ensured I went back and reread a couple of stories immediately after finishing the book, just because they were that good.

There isn’t a bad story in this collection, and my innate hypergraphia is taking a nap at the moment, so I will just focus on the best of the bunch.

Let’s begin with “Waste.” This was one of those stories that, as I read it, made me feel like I was going a little insane. It’s a strange piece that I found compelling despite the fact that I find eating pig horrifying. Perhaps I liked the story because Gray’s characters explore the whole, “when does it stop being pig and become pork.” A man who works collecting medical waste from doctors’ offices shares odd culinary experiences with his neighbor, a woman with lovely collarbones who works as a line cook in a vegetarian restaurant. Olive is an exotic foodie, creating culinary experiences out of the strangest meats, making a sickening but sweet sacrifice that Roger may not wholly appreciate but at least his experiences with medical waste gave him the stomach to cope. As a woman who loves to cook, is meat-shy, and given to feeling deep disgust for any body process that would require a medical waste pick-up, it was unusual how much I enjoyed this story. Sometimes I enjoy having my disgust pinged, I guess.

Food horror actually played a significant role in this collection. In “Dinner” a woman finds herself with the unenviable task of eating a plate of hair in order to ensure her relationship continues smoothly, even though no one particularly knows why the plate of hair is on the table or even why it is important. A short, short story, this read more like the retelling of an unsettling dream than a story, a dream I have not had myself yet understood.

This dream-like element to storytelling continues in “A Javelina Story” wherein a hostage negotiator finds himself paired with five javelinas at a hostage scene wherein boy scouts are tied to chairs. The pigs just want to eat, the hostage-taker misinterprets their actions and everyone learns an odd lesson.

Many of the stories are flash fiction, so short that you don’t really process the punch until you feel the bruise on your psyche. Take “Unsolved Mystery.” Very short piece about the investigation into a serial killer with a bonesaw. These are the last two lines:

What I don’t say is, God’s a clever bastard and I do respect him. He’s everywhere.

“Thoughts While Strolling” does what it says on the tin. This story spoke directly to my particular sense of humor.

Jim Hale better train his dog.

That dog runs the perimeter of Hale’s yard, treading the ground until he makes a ditch. Dog says, “Hey, come over here.” When you do, that damn dog gives you a recipe for lemon bars which omits egg yolks and disappoints you sincerely. 

Later in the story:

Frogs croaking.

Turn them over and tickle them, the young boys say to the girls. After much conversing and screeching, one brave girl picks up a slick frog, green as a fig. She flips it over so delicately in her small palm that the boys stop their shoving and feel strange for watching. The girl extends one slender finger and runs it slowly up and down the frog’s exposed belly. When the frog urinates on her, she looks at the boys with loathing. She will later go on to swallow two goldfish alive.

“Diary of the Blockage” made me nervous because I can all too easily see this story happening to me. After a particularly upsetting incident involving a large iron pill, Mr Oddbooks can tell you that I will likely die from a foreign matter lodged, “it seems, between my esophagus and windpipe.” The narrator of the story tries to get the substance to come up but cannot. And much like me, she finds it hard to seek help for her problem:

DAY 2

I did not call the doctor. I went so far as to find my insurance card, but I could not imagine the remember Miss Mosely, well she has had a thing lodged in her throat all within range of anyone with half a mind to be within earshot of the the office window. I feel very sincerely that bodily functions have their place, but why would the toiletries and makeup and personal privacy industries all be such multimillion dollar successes if the place for those bodily functions was in public? To say otherwise is to disrespect culture.

This story was really on the mark for me, a neurotic who is determined to stay well enough that I never need to avail myself of a bedpan, though I did once vomit on one of my cats because I was  slow moving due to leg surgery and had stomach flu. I sense this story may be a pregnancy nightmare, too, for the lump in the throat later takes on a life of its own, in a way. All I know is that it was very important to the paranoid part of me that now takes my evening pills in far smaller clumps.

The best story was “The Darkness.” A penguin and an armadillo meet at a bar. The penguin has Fought the Darkness and can speak of little else, and the armadillo has spread vegetable oil on her shell in an attempt to look pretty and shiny.

“You are a penguin and I am an armadillo,” the armadillo said. “My name is Betsy.”

“That’s a beautiful name,” murmured the penguin, who was more interested in the condensation on his glass. “I fought the darkness.”

“You did not.”

The penguin swiveled his head to look at Betsy. He had very beady eyes.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Ray,” said the penguin,

“That’s a nice name.”

The penguin explains what he means by The Darkness and Betsy really wants to stay on track with flirting, changing the subject, but Ray demands his due.

“I suppose you think I’m some sort of lesser penguin, just because I fought the fucking darkness and tasted my own blood, because I haven’t protected a stupid fucking egg.”

Betsy felt tears welling up. Don’t cry, she said to herself. It would be really stupid to cry at this moment.

“I honor your fight. I did not mean to disrespect you.”

Ray sank back. “It’s no disrespect,” he said. “I’m just a penguin in a bar, drinking my gin out of a fucking highball glass for some reason.”

“I was wondering why they did that,” the armadillo said.

“Doesn’t make any goddamn sense,” said the penguin.

And it really doesn’t make any sense but the story is delightful nonetheless, encapsulating all that is so banal about so much of human interaction in these unlikely beasts as they attempt and perhaps succeed just a little at making some sort of connection. I read this one aloud to Mr. Oddbooks one night, unconsciously slipping into the redneck accent of my youth that I repress as second nature.

This collection was just too wonderful for me. A letter from a woman to her apartment complex complaining about the year’s Christmas decoration contest. One story told the strange tale of a man married to a paring knife and another married to a bag of fish. A man takes up residence in his suitcase, much to the dismay of his girlfriend. Vultures come and loom over an entire town. Bizarre, magical, strange, nauseating stories, all crafted from a mind so focused on my own nightmares and uneasy dreams that I felt myself becoming paranoid at times. Luckily, Gray is such a talented storyteller that her gift was greater than my nervousness and I highly recommend this book to all who find themselves wondering what would happen if one was able to splice Garrison Keillor, Bradley Sands and Raymond Carver into one writing force.

Author: Bradley Sands

Type of Book: Fiction, bizarro, flash fiction, short story collection

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Well, one of the stories is called “Crawling Over Fifty Good Pussies to Get One Fat Boy’s Asshole.”

Availability: Published by Lazy Fascist Press in 2010, you can get a copy here:

Comments: We end Bizarro Week with Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy by Bradley Sands, and I need to remind you that today is also the last day you can run rampant in the comments in order to enter my free book drawing. I am giving away a free copy of each book I discuss this week, and here are the details on how you can enter to win. Comment freely. Comment with vigor. Comment with the knowledge that each comment adds to the sum total of democratic good in this world.

It’s fitting that I am ending this week with Sands’ collection of flash and short fiction. Some stories are absurd. Some are surreal. Some are really fucked up. Some are just a meaningless romp with words. Some are deeply layered and strangely touching. All of them have the demented hand of Sands going for them, but the breadth of story-type made this one of those collections where I am yet again struggling to find a common theme to unite the collection other than the relatively useless, “It’s good, read it.” So again, I am just going to discuss the stories I liked the best in the collection.

“Scenes from the Life of a Greeting Card Designer” initially suffered because I read it shortly after watching the execrable 500 Days of Summer (in lieu of shouting at you kids to get off my lawn, I will say I suspect this is how my mother felt when I sang the praises of John Hughes and all she could see were attractive young people whining). However, on a second read it fared better. The story, one of the longer in the book, follows the life of Tim Hallmark over four Halloweens. On October 31, 5008 BS, Tim is working on a greeting card in his cardboard house when angry trick or treaters attack him with missiles for offering cardboard candy. The kids decide nukes are in order:

Tim Hallmark watches the nuclear warhead and thinks about his life. He screams out the words from his favorite creations:

Happy birthday! You are one day closer to your putrification!

Happy Mother’s Day, but I never asked to be thrust out of rotting taco.

Sorry your grandma died! She molested me when I was eight!

He doesn’t understand why the American public has never understood his genius.

Never fear, he survives and Halloween 5009 BS finds him working as a sideshow freak, living in a dumpster. Mutated by radiation, he is angry and poisons the children who knock on his dumpster asking for candy.

A little boy tears open a greeting card envelope and card, sees a picture of a skeleton in a thong bikini. Under the picture, he reads:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You have been poisoned
and it sucks to be you.

Tim tells the kids if they overthrow the government for him he will give them the antidote to the poison, but, sadly, the cost of the poisoned candies left him too broke to afford the remedy. But at least he is President.

As President he does terrible things, like threatening women who spurn his advances with rape camp and rubbing his testicles on the gold in Fort Knox, and he has guards to protect him from the angry mobs. But on Halloween, the sexually harassed woman turns out to be a tank in disguise and he is betrayed, oh no! The next Halloween, 5011 BS, finds Tim hiding in the sewers. He is now a eunuch and works on greeting cards in the sewers as the relatives of the kids he poisoned are trying to find him.

Right now, he is sitting on a pipe, working on his latest creation. He is calligraphing the words, “I’ll never flush you my darling. We’re purr-fect for each other.” He has already drawn a cat blowing kisses at an unflushed bowel movement.

But then the kids find him and shoot him with super-soakers full of flame. But since their older siblings were mean to him, they put out the flames and again, as fitting as the man who sends people to rape camps, kills children and rubs his balls on gold, he betrays the kind children and comes to a conclusion that I will not spoil.

So. That is one of the more lunatic stories and within it, there may be some meaning. It has a plot and Tim is characterized by his actions and we walk away knowing he was a very bad man and the ending points at a moral purpose to the piece. Ultimately I decided just to take this as a funny, gross story about a mean, gross man and left it at that.

Other stories have similar ambiguities. For example, “The Time Traveling Giraffe Defies God” seems to be just a strange vignette, and the title pretty much sums up this flash-length story. The giraffe has a headache from time traveling and asks God to give him a shorter neck and a pogo stick but God denies him as He is still creating Zimbabwe. The giraffe bites off God’s ear but he is still time traveling and his head still hurts. This is, I think,  not wholly absurd, because we can sort of derive a sense of an uncaring God in the face of suffering, sort of, and it is not wholly surreal. Maybe this is irreal? I still need to read up on irrealism so who knows? You tell me if you know. Many stories sort of have this tendency to seem utterly without meaning but have a maddening tendril of meaning in them that prevents me from seeing these stories as just a silly, lunatic ride.

Also, strangely, many of them, even as flash pieces, are complete summed up in their titles:  “A Headless Man Falls in Love With a Bowl of Rice.” Insanely, the story begins with the line:

The headless man is eating dinner.

The headless man feels incomplete and realizes that what he is missing is an emotion, an emotion he can direct at others. He focuses his emotion on the plate of rice in front of him, because women don’t like him because he is headless and men like to beat him up. And again, there is that annoying tendril, that piece of hair that gets in your face when you have the windows down in your car and you just can’t get it back in place: those who are extremely different may have a hard time finding traditional love. Maybe.

But then there are stories like “The Study” that are unmistakably absurdist. A bookcase will show a secret passage if you remove the book Cellular Metabolism at Fifty Degrees Celsius. The passage leads into a woman’s uterus, and there a secret passage will lead to series of vague places wherein the passage seeker can leave for another place but he can never come back to the study because there are no books called Cellular Metabolism at Fifty Degrees Celsius to remove from a shelf.

“Want to Hear Something Really Creepy?” defies even the labels of absurdist or surrealist. It is a nine line poem that discusses sitting on couches as a man writes the poem in question, and how the couches seemed to change. No more, no less. It almost has a Zen quality to it. I wonder if one could clear their mind of cluttered thought if they pondered this poem. Not entirely what is the sound of one hand clapping territory but not far off either.

I sort of want to discuss the story that confirmed this as odd, the brain bending “Crawling Over Fifty Good Pussies to Get One Fat Boy’s Asshole.” But I can’t. Any attempts to summarize this story will force me to take to my bed for a week or so. Just know that it features a gangsta Alex Trebek robot who busts a cap in Chuck Woolery’s ass and Stagger Lee, the trickster pimp, who wreaks violent havoc. It’s beyond lunatic. It’s an amazing work but I’ll be damned if I can come close to describing what Sands put on paper.

I’ll end this review with my favorite story in this collection, “Invincible.” Beware, I am going to be spoiling the hell out of this story, so skip to the final paragraph if you need to. This story is about a character called “the boy.” He is a stuttering child and is selling lemonade at a stand in his yard, making some money. Then come two neighborhood toughs:

Billy and Jack come down the street in fine Italian suits. The boy does not like Billy and Jack. They are bullies.

[...]

Jack removes a Tommy Gun from his pants, which contain an interdimensional dimension transcending time and space. He pours the lemonade on the sidewalk… slowly. “Faggot,” he says, “You’re cutting into our business, faggot. Go inside and stay there, faggot, unless you wanna be filled full of holes and eaten like Swiss cheese.”

The threats make Billy cry. His mother hears him and comes out to see what is happening:

Rata tat tat. Jack shoots the mother in the chest with his Tommy Gun.

She is not bothered by the bullets. She is unfazed.

Mothers are indestructible.

This is one of those times when bizarro may seem loony but really isn’t. This story is utterly perfect in depicting a common scene of bullying and the way a loved and protected child sees a parent. The bullies are so terrifying they resemble mafia hoods to the boy, and their guns may be toys but the menace Billy and Jack offer makes time seem like it is standing still, like time and space have ceased to exist. All there is is the fear and terror in that moment. But then comes the mother, who never speaks, only making guttural sounds as she protects her son, sounds that in turn terrify Billy and Jack. They run away and she takes her sad son into the house where it is safe from bullies.

Even though it uses the often strange narrative style found in Sands’ tales that are absurdist, it would be hard to find a story that depicts better the vulnerability of an atypical child at the hands of bullies and the way that a fierce mother can vanquish all foes. When I read this story out loud to Mr. Oddbooks, he remarked that the story reminded him of this drawing. This story amazingly captures the fear of being a child and universal awe of having a mother-protector.

It seems fitting to end Bizarro Week with a book that seems to encompass so much of the bizarro genre. Grossness, lunacy, clever meanings, tender interpretations, absolutely no meaning aside from the experience of reading… Sands’ voice is unmistakable but his focus is wide and this collection of 52 stories shows a remarkable ability to write the absurd, the surreal and the all-too-real, while also throwing in some really interesting and foul mayhem. I highly recommend this book to all of you. Thanks for reading with me this week, and I will announce the winner of the contest later this evening. Send your friends, spread the word, because I love giving away books almost as much as I like writing about them. Let’s make sure my cookie jar is full of names when the drawing time comes! Much love to you all.

Author: Patrick Wensink

Why I Consider This Book Odd: Well, Eraserhead Press published this book, and they are generally a pretty good weather vane for oddness. But I also suspected the book was odd because the author contacted me so he could send me an ARC because he wanted me to review it (yes, an ARC!!! I swear to god I almost wept because only certified, authentic reviewers get ARCs, right? Right?). If an author reads this site for any reason, chances are his literary output is going to be odd.

Also, I heartily encourage this trend of sending me actual books. Not only would I get free books, but my delusions of grandeur mean I am likely to review said book because I am still in the early OMG THIS MEANS I AM A REAL CRITIC stage of the game. So yeah, send me your odd books, odd authors. Also, I am not above using the emotion card, so send them to me because I love you. All of you. Even that weirdo living in a basement who keeps e-mailing me chapters of his novel about his dog’s wang.

Type of Book: Fiction, short stories, flash fiction, bizarro

Availability: Published by Eraserhead Press in 2009, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Okay, yeah, this was my first book offered to me because I review odd books, but don’t let that make you think I am gonna give this book a sweetheart review on that merit alone. Also, I’m not giving it a sweetheart review because I’m a known sucker for flash fiction and short, short stories. I’m giving it a sweetheart review because it is a good book. The stories, some odder than others, are all pretty solid, and one of the stories has resonated with me as being not only a clever concept, but haunting and upsetting.

This book may actually be a good bridge into bizarro for some readers because while it is odd, it does not cross wholly into the full-bore weirdness one experiences reading Carlton Mellick III, one of the best-known bizarros. Additionally, these stories are very much, for the most part, grounded in reality, not incorporating the heavy use of magical realism that one sees so much of in bizarro. I find magical realism amazing when done well, but it is no black mark against Sex Dungeons for Sale! that the stories are so grounded. I know many think that bizarro is schtick, the replacement for pulp sci-fi for a more jaded generation and they are wrong. While bizarro’s certainly entertaining, increasingly the writers in the genre produce literary quality works, pieces that would not be out of place in Zoetrope or Zyzzyva. That is why I think, for those who want to dip their toes into high weirdness, Wensink’s book would be a good starting place. I could see some of these stories in edgy mainstream lit journals. They are odd, but odd in a way that is extremely relatable.

A couple of Wensink’s stories are highly communicative, with the speakers talking directly to the audience or interacting with them. In these stories, Wensink asks the reader to be the unseen character, making the reader take on roles unexpected and outre, thus ensuring a bizarre experience reading his tales. The title story, “Sex Dungeon for Sale” follows a harried real estate agent as she shows a home with a well-equipped sex dungeon. The reader assumes the role of one of the two people seeing the home as the agent speaks to us, asking us to please understand how… well, how the sex dungeon can add to the square footage to the house, among other things. This connection to the reader is carried to the extreme in “Chicken Soup for the Kidnapper’s Soul.” The piece, assuming the reader abducts people for assorted reasons, is humorous, and again makes the reader assume an interactive role. This story is a tonic for everyone who wishes that Jack Canfield would just shut the hell up already. Part of me wishes he had taken it a bit further, into even more disturbing criminal realms, but as it stands it is a clever story.

The story “The Many Lives of James Brown’s Capes” was evocative of one of my favorite authors, the under-appreciated (at least in America) Christopher Fowler. In this story, we see possessions belonging to the Hardest Working Man in Show Business that are sold in auction after he dies, and where they go and how they are received. There is a silliness to it, but an edge as well, showing how the the mundane can become amazing, absurd, or, to the unimaginative, irritating.

“Jesus Toast” is a bittersweet tale from a strange woman with an even stranger gift that she puts to good use until, like most gifts, it turns against her.

At times, Wensink seemed a little too O. Henry-esque, with twists that at times come out of nowhere, like “You Can’t Blow Yourself to Smithereens on an Empty Belly” or are telegraphed too easily, like in “Pandemic Jones” and “Clean Bill of Health.” Sudden turns are to be expected in bizarro fiction so I am unsure if the former is a problem. When a story is entertaining, the latter is definitely not a problem. It’s not like I don’t sense where every Joyce Carol Oates story is going when I begin reading, so I see this as no strike against the book, but for people who dislike knowing where a story will end up, at times Wensink will telegraph too clearly where the piece is going.

The gently weird litters the book – dishwashers with kill cycles, a disturbing relationship between parents and their little boy who suddenly turns French, one-hit wonders planning revenge against their agent.

But the story that clings to my brain the closest is “Donor 322.” You sort of see it coming but you don’t. At first you think you’re in for a Hard Candy sort of ride but it’s not that. It’s not that at all. I will give nothing else away about this story because I think this piece is worth the price of admission, which may sound specious since I got the book for free, but trust me, I have purchased entire books for one story. This story would make me buy this book.

All in all, a very good book from a brand new writer. I will definitely spend money on any new works Wensink comes out with in the future.

Author: Robert Olen Butler

Why I Consider This Book Odd: This book has an absolutely lunatic premise. It is said that a decapitated head can remain in a state of consciousness for 90 seconds. In heightened states of emotion or agitation, people can speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Combine the two and you have the micro stories in this book.

Type of work: Fiction, short stories, flash fiction

Availability: Published by First Chronicle Books in 2006, this book is still in print. You can buy a copy here:

Comments: It’s weird, including a Pulitzer Prize winner here, but hell, I already got me a Nobel Laureate, so why fight it. The acclaimed can also be so very, very odd.

So, as I said above, this book combines the premise of consciousness in a decapitated head and the ability to speak quickly when under duress. This book is a series of tales from heads speaking approximately 240 words. I initially did not like this book and set it aside for a few months, but when I picked it back up again, I fell in love with it.

The tales from heads separated from bodies range from the touching, to the horrific, to funny. Anne Boleyn’s words after her head is severed from her body are to her daughter, Elizabeth, and they are heart wrenching:

…but still there is my sweet girl my Elizabeth her pale face and her hair the color of the first touch of sun in the sky, the pale fire of her hair, she turns her gray eyes to me and I know I am soon to leave her… and I say rise my sweet child and she straightens and lifts her face and I bend to her, I draw near to her, I cup my daughter’s head in my hands

The story from Lydia Koenig, a woman who was beheaded by her son in 1999, is just dreadful:

…my baby, my own baby boy his bones deep and untouchable inside him, I dress him in pink thinking it makes no difference I hold him baby and then in plaid and he has freckles on his nose… and the man is gone and my baby cries all night through, though he is no baby he is returned and he says help me find a vein help me tap this vein and I cannot…

The story from Gooseneck (Gansnacken), a dwarf who was a court jester to Duke Eberhard the Bearded, who beheaded him in 1494 for sad, but funny actions beyond his control:

…I am jester not a sailor the goat breaks his knot and bolts just as I leap from the rope and fly at my stricken lord and fall heavy upon him, crotch to face, and alas I am already full excited at my joke, like a lover

The book contains many famous beheadings, like John the Baptist, Mary, Queen of Scots, Lady Jane Grey and similar, but also has more modern, less famous decapitation victims telling their tales, like people beheaded in the Middle East since 9/11. There are two non-humans in the book – a chicken, whose body indeed ends up crossing the road, and the dragon slain by St. George (who is also included in the book). There is a man beheaded in 40,000 B.C. and insanely, the chicken speaks better than the dragon, who speaks better than the Cro-Magnon man. Most insane and odd of all, Butler records his own putative decapitation in 2010, losing his head when he sticks his head ill-advisedly out an elevator.

This book is a short little read, but you may find yourself going back to reread the tales. It’s a delightful, odd little book, built around an odd but amazing premise, the sort of idea that makes you smack yourself on the head and wish you had thought of it yourself. The brief stories are richly detailed and full of both history and emotion. It’s amazing what Butler can do in 240 words. I am a well-known lover of excellent flash fiction and Butler’s flash is breathtaking.