A lovesick kraken slowly drags the object of its desire - a ship of sailers - into the sea; a group of cantankerous saints materialize in a well-appointed parlour, and must unravel the mystery of how they got there; ageing fathers are sunk to the bottom of the ocean in pressure-sealed crates in a time-honoured ritual.
Michael Andreasen's stories romp through the lunatic and surreal with a tender generous ease; there is a joyous absurdity to each premise. Just because a sister is born without a head doesn't mean her brother won't love and protect her; just because an adulterous tryst ends in alien abduction doesn't mean the man doesn't miss his wife.
An extremely funny, very weird, brilliantly constructed set of stories, from an exciting young writer.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Michael Andreasen's stories romp through the lunatic and surreal with a tender generous ease; there is a joyous absurdity to each premise. Just because a sister is born without a head doesn't mean her brother won't love and protect her; just because an adulterous tryst ends in alien abduction doesn't mean the man doesn't miss his wife.
An extremely funny, very weird, brilliantly constructed set of stories, from an exciting young writer.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Sits on a small shelf of books that I will read a dozen times over. It is full of explosions of magic." - Ramona Ausubel
"A treasury of fantastic tales - full of mermaids, prophetic dancing bears, exploding children, and distraught time travellers. It's also a collection of longing, of loss, of loving deeply, and of learning what it means to care for others. A brilliant book, daring and wonderful." - Alexander Weinstein
"Andreasen has a big, roomy imagination, and a command of language to furnish the worlds he creates with both precision and grandeur. These stories are, by turns, timeless and urgent, dreamy and nightmarish, heartbroken and hopeful. A brilliant collection." - Charles Yu
"A treasury of fantastic tales - full of mermaids, prophetic dancing bears, exploding children, and distraught time travellers. It's also a collection of longing, of loss, of loving deeply, and of learning what it means to care for others. A brilliant book, daring and wonderful." - Alexander Weinstein
"Andreasen has a big, roomy imagination, and a command of language to furnish the worlds he creates with both precision and grandeur. These stories are, by turns, timeless and urgent, dreamy and nightmarish, heartbroken and hopeful. A brilliant collection." - Charles Yu
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Michael Andreasen's The Sea Beast Takes a Lover