The Ape's Wife and Other Stories
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Caitlín R. Kiernan has been described as one of “the most original and audacious weird writers of her generation” (Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, The Weird), “one of our essential writers of dark fiction” (New York Times), and S. T. Joshi has proclaimed, “hers is now the voice of weird fiction.” In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories—Kiernan’s twelfth collection of short fiction since 2001—she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir. From the subtle horror of “One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm)” and “Tall Bodies” to a demon-haunted, alternate reality Manhattan, from Mars to a near-future Philadelphia, and from ghoulish urban legends of New England to a feminist-queer retelling of Beowulf, these thirteen stories keep reader always on their toes, ever uncertain of the next twist or turn.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these 13 previously published stories, Kiernan (The Drowning Girl) deftly deconstructs boundaries: between genres, between worlds, between mundane and entirely alien existences. Well-known tales are reshaped in Kiernan's distinct style Beowulf in "The Sea Troll's Daughter," King Kong in "The Ape's Wife" while characters as familiar as an artist struggling with a painting, in "Random Thoughts Before a Fatal Crash," or a science writer researching an article, in "One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm)," are plucked from the ordinary and set down in the uncanny. Standout expeditions include "Gal pagos," featuring a woman trying to record and come to terms with what she saw on an interplanetary journey; "As Red as Red," an unsettling Rhode Island interlude; and the title story, in which Ann Darrow is "lost in All-At-Once time" and the possible lives she might have led. These pieces are diverse, but isolation is a thread woven through almost all of them: What might we sense or experience when we are entirely, completely alone? What truths might we admit? Those interested in exploring those questions, or in transcending genre and other boundaries, will enjoy this collection.
