Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
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3.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A TIME Top 10 Fiction Book of 2022
An NPR, Book Riot, Chicago Public Library, Tor.com, South China Morning Post, Ms. Magazine, and Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2022
Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Prize, 2022 Shirley Jackson Award for Short Fiction & The 2023 Washington State Book Award in Fiction
A BuzzFeed, WIRED, LitHub, ALTA, and PureWow Best Book of Winter
"The strange and wonderful define Kim Fu’s story collection, where the line between fantasy and reality fades in and out, elusive and beckoning." —The New York Times Book Review
In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.
Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and novelist Fu (The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore) delivers a stellar story collection that grounds tales of magical realism in her characters' emotional realities. In "Liddy, First to Fly," preteen narrator Grace and her friends pop the bumps on Liddy's legs, prompting the appearance of feathers and wings. The mysterious development dovetails with the friends' own normal pubescent changes, and Grace muses, "The realm of pretend had only just closed its doors to us, and light still leaked through around the edges." "Time Cubes," set in a mall where kiosks sell cubes that demonstrate the life cycles of plants and animals, follows a woman named Alice who lives and works in the building as a lab tech. Identifying as a "Depressive Insider," she goes to therapy in the mall and she tries dating apps. In "Sandman," a hooded figure shows up in the night on a woman named Kelly's bed wearing a robe that contains a multitude of sand, which Kelly, who is unafraid of the sandman and suffers from insomnia, is eager to consume. An earnest coworker gives Kelly tips to help her sleep, but the sandman becomes her salvation. Fu's stories crackle with quirky plots, and her characters' problems and hunger for new possibilities are palpable. This is a winner.
