FICTION: FANTASY
Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and Sublime From Tin House edited by Rob Spillman (Tin House Books)
The title “Fantastic Women” does not oversell the content. This story collection features works surreal and peculiar, unexpected and sublime. Some are told from a fairy-tale-like remove. Others play out in surroundings that seem pedestrian, until they are not. Each of the 18 tales shares the DNA of an imagined world that is just a bit off kilter; each of the writers makes a skewed possibility her own.
Aimee Bender, author of “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake,” finds her magic in a normal realm. “Americca” takes place in a home where objects just show up. It starts innocently enough, with an extra tube of toothpaste. Bender isn’t concerned with how or why the objects — a candlestick, cans of soup, never a winning lottery ticket — appear. She instead concentrates on how the mystery stretches the fabric of the family; one sense of the story is that this could happen to you.
“The Young Wife’s Tale,” by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, is set in a more exotic locale. Her opening twists “once upon a time”: “There once was a king.” A bifurcated tale follows. The wives in his kingdom are grateful for his return; the army is home, their husbands have returned. Yet the king’s distant presence is the root of unusual behavior. One woman spends her days wandering in the woods; another starves herself to a wisp. The king is reincarnated daydreams in the present, with equal strange effect on the wives.
Each story is singular, in both style and content. “Whitework,” by Kate Bernheimer, unfolds in a surreal but strangely believable world. The story’s end speaks chillingly to a reader when the central character is offered a haunting choice. Sanity lies in avoiding gloomy thoughts. She is given free access to books, along with a warning: “You have the key to the Library . . . only be careful what you read.”
Two stories are particularly unsettling. “The Entire Predicament,” by Lucy Corin, and “Hot, Fast, and Sad,” by Alissa Nutting, center on the impending deaths of the narrators. Neither situation is pretty; only writers confident in their craft can evoke this kind of horror. If fiction, in part, should help a reader understand the unfamiliar and perhaps the unpleasant, these stories succeed magnificently.
Samantha Hunt, whose most recent novel is “The Invention of Everything Else,” delivers “Beast.” Hers is a meditation on a marriage, one in which infidelity plays out in transformation. The story’s end raises the question as to just how contagious infidelity might be.
The stories collected here were originally featured in Tin House (), publisher of the eclectic. The collection’s common thread is a departure from comfortable reality. These aren’t fantasy stories. They are, instead, anchored in a world where the fantastic becomes real.
“Fantastic Women” pulls off a daunting task. These stories improve with a second reading, remaining fresh and surprising even when their final twist is known.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer living in Centennial.
