🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

Perhaps the strangest collection of short stories this reader has encountered, this is a hard book to categorize, but an easy book to love. Laugh-out-loud funny in places, often sardonic, absurd and always wildly inventive, these short stories contain some repeating characters and straddle situations, including those involving: inane academic gobbledy-gook; communication misfirings; outcasts and nomads; Korean spies; college students reckonings; and of course, lovers and the vulnerable (sometimes where you least expect them).

Within these pages you’re as likely to meet an erudite author sparring with his Machiavellian translator as you are to encounter an ice-in-her-veins lesbian freelance journalist (who is also a Korean spy); seventeen professional translators, all women named “Tina”, living on a remote island; a modified kindle with an ulterior motive; a heartbreakingly lonely midget with a mission; or an irreverent sibling (with an equally strange girlfriend) and a very poor grasp of the internet.

Cheeky, surreal, imaginative, equally light-hearted and tragic, the stories are in some ways reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut, or John Irving, – leading to a rarified collection that is hard to put down, and a wonderful treat to spend time with.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC for this book. All thoughts presented are my own.