The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

by Aimee Bender

Bold, sexy, and daring, these stories portray a world twisted on its axis, an unconventional place that resembles nothing so much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. Bender's prose is glorious, musical, and colloquial, an anthology of the bizarre. In 'The Rememberer', a man undergoes reverse evolution -- from man to ape to salamander -- at which point a friend releases him into the sea, while in another story a woman gives birth to her mother. A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?

Contents:
The rememberer --
Call my name --
What you left in the ditch --
The bowl --
Marzipan --
Quiet please --
Skinless --
Fugue --
Drunken Mimi --
Fell this girl --
The healer --
Loser --
Legacy --
Dreaming in Polish --
The ring --
The girl in the flamable skirt.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 13, 1998

About the author

Aimee Bender is the author of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her work has been widely anthologized and has been translated into ten languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collecting 16 somewhat magical realist / surreal very short stories. Bender is a great short story writer in that she gets you into the setting within the first page and keeps you interested 'til the last with her surreal characters and sometimes surreal worlds. 7 out of 12, Three Star read.

2013 read

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's no doubt that Aimee Bender has a vivid imagination and a penchant for the strange. Unfortunately, for me that is simply not enough to make for a memorable, satisfying read. I came away from this collection with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment.

Sure, the writing is fine and it even sparkles on occasion. There are enough strange things happening to catch anyone's interest, at least momentarily. The problem is a lack of depth. Every single story felt superficial to me, as if it was all about artifice and creating the most unusual situations possible, rather than developing characters I could care about. Try as I might, I could find no sense of connection to the woman whose lover de-evolves, the girls with hands of ice and fire, or the robber and his girlfriend who have an appetite for sugar and jewelry.

Other writers have covered this territory before- the land of the surreal, the strange and unreal as a mirror to our own lives. From writers as diverse as Franz Kafka to Ray Bradbury to Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the magical or irreal has proven an effective way of looking at ourselves. Unfortunately, in this collection, the technique seems to be more of a flashy ends in itself rather than a device that lends substance and meaning.

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

How many times has this happened to you?

You're reading a novel about a single mother struggling to raise two kids in a backwoods town in Kentucky and you flip to the author info on the dust jacket...only to discover that the writer is a single mother raising two kids in a small town in Kentucky, and you say to yourself (or the person trying to sleep next to you), "HOW IS THIS EVEN FICTION?"

Well, that won't happen when you're reading THIS book. Unless Ms. Bender is the weirdest person who ever lived, these stories are NOT lifted from her own life experience, but are born, instead, from a delightfully twisted imagination.

Take a look at the first lines from some of her strange tales:

~Steven returned from the war without lips.

~One week after his father died, my father woke up with a hole in his stomach.

~There was an imp who went to high school with stilts on so that no one would know he was an imp.

~There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice.

~The hunchback took in the pregnant girl to hide her from high school until the baby popped out.

Well, okay...maybe Aimee WAS once cared for by a hunchback, but the rest of that stuff - ZOWIE! - pure imagination!
Her work is sad and sweet and charming and delightful and purely FICTITIOUS!
I LOVE IT! And if you're sick of fiction that seems a bit too much like real life, you might LOVE IT, too.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a perfect example of how judging a book by its cover can be problematic. Had I never gathered non-cover-related compelling reasons that I might like this book I may've never picked it up, based on that quick, cliche judgment of the book binding's face. The cover looks, hmm, what's the word, twee. Cutesy. Quirky. Etc. Not exactly the kind of thing I like to read. But its contents, while being whimsical to some degree, are much more richly textured with moods than mere variations of quirky cutesy whimsy.

I recently described another five-star short story collection as being like, "Aimee Bender's wrist-slashing bedroom-sulking little sister," despite the fact that, "Aimee Bender, while able to dabble with the grotesque via misleadingly sunny build-ups, doesn't take it to the same heights many of the stories in this collection do." Now, it would be helpful if people had read the book I was comparing this one to, but since I only know of a very small number of people that've read Unclean Jobs For Women and Girls I'll have to try to give a better description.

It's been long enough between reading this and now that I can't conjure up many super specific rehashings of the book. Regardless, I can still recall what it was that I loved about it in general.

The stories, much like many in Ryan Boudinot's Littlest Hitler, spin yarns centered around the fantastical and the bizarre but with a straight face. This is a basic approach to books and film that I love and Ms. Bender pulls it off with a deliciously elegant precision that I find pleasurably enviable as someone who tends to veer into the overly-elaborate when writing. She homes in on that bulls-eye of 'brevity = wit' in a seemingly effortless manner; the arrow plucked and secured, the bow drawn, aimed and triggered all in one graceful, fluid motion.

These couple-of-bites-sized tales tickle the imagination sectors of the brain into lighting up the fMRI read, massage the abdominals with laughter, and gently squeeze the heart at just the right moments. A lovely experience, which momentarily pulled me out of the darkened hallway I was sitting in at the time (overnight shift at a treatment center for juvenile sex offenders) as well as the black hole my head felt like then, for reasons too personal and too raw and probably too boring to elaborate on.

Thanks for that, Aimee.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

How funny that I should have just read the essay "A Reader's Manifesto", by B. R. Myers, when I picked up this book. In the essay (available at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107... for now) Myers skewers various superstars of "literary fiction"--Cormac McCarthy, Rick Moody, David Guterson, and others--for turning out poorly-written books that are all flash and no substance. The brilliantly bizarre set pieces here, unfortunately, suffer from the same problem. Bender is all about the good sentences, without much thought given to making sense. Its the kind of writing critics describe as "scintillating" or "virtuosic". It sounds great, but then you realize that it doesn't really mean anything.

Opening at random, I find:

"Had the imp lifted the can, he would have been stunned: it was so light! Where did the beer go? Had he looked closer, he might've seen it riding up the strands of her hair, brown droplets on a lime escalator, sucked up by that straw of a lock, foam vanishing into the mane in front of him, the mane he pictured at night floating over his small shoulders when he was in his bed, naked, eyes closed."

Dear lord. The inner voice, with exclamation point. The droplets on an escalator (?), which is also a straw, which is also apparently part of a horse. And none of this actually happened anyway, since he didn't actually lift the can (interior exclamation notwithstanding) or look at the hair after all ("had he..."). If you read this quickly, it seems to sparkle--but a closer read reveals that it's just nonsense. There's nothing wring with wordplay, but a good author can both make a sentence shine and make it worth writing in the first place.

[Maciek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aimee Bender's debut collection of stories is comprised of the sort of fiction which excels in theory, but not in practice. As advertised on the back cover, these stories are supposed to be twisted, unconventional and grotesque - but are they?

The first story in The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, The Rememberer, is the most successful: it's about a woman whose partner is experiencing reverse evolution. From a man he slowly morphs first into an ape, and then into another lower form of life, a sea turtle, ultimately to end up as a microbe. His wife realizes that she cannot stop the process and that he'll soon be completely gone, and tries to hold on to the only thing she'll have left - memories. Despite the absurdity of the premise Bender's short (just a few pages long) story is a poignant piece which just works - we connect with the woman and understand her grief as her husband's slowly turning into a salamander.

Not much else in the collection impressed me. The stories were full of weird and uncanny concepts, set for the sake of an epiphany which never arrived; Richard Brautigan wrote the exact same sort of fiction in the 60's, which is largely forgotten today for a reason - Brautigan's absurd moments were pretty much a product of their time, a drug-fueled decade of love and hippie music, a time when things he wrote about probably made sense to at least some people. But if Brautigan was a product of his time, what does it make Aimee Bender? I'd like to think that it makes her an author who in this debut has yet to find a way on how to invent a fantastic and outrageous premise and write an actual story - with real people that readers can care about and relate to, just like Karen Russel does so brilliantly. Since this collection was published 16 years ago, there's a real chance that she did exactly that - and I'd report to you with the answer when I'd read her other work.

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

All's I am saying is, if you do not love Aimee Bender yet, get this book, read Skinless, Fell This Girl, The Healer, and The Ring. If you still don't love her after that, I'm not really sure we can be friends anymore.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories aren't really my thing. I also kind of felt these were lacking in substance a bit, and felt weird for the sake of it.

[Ben Loory · Rating 4 out of 5]

i've read aimee bender stories before but never a whole book at once. i think to be honest i like them better spaced out. but that's my fault, i suppose, and not hers. not like she's got a gun to my head.

anyway, bender writes short, perfectly structured surreal first-person stories. well, mostly first person. sometimes third. there's a story about a man who wakes up with a hole going directly through his stomach, and then his wife becomes pregnant and gives birth to her own mother. but it's first person from the pov of his daughter. there's a story about two girls in a small town, one with a hand of ice and the other with a hand of fire. but it's told from the pov of a third girl who desperately wants a friend and envies their oppositional bond. so there's always this further psychological spin on the surreal events detailed. they tend to have a kind of vertiginous effect because literally anything can happen at any given moment, and usually does. she piles surreal complications one on top of another until the only thing linking us to any kind of reality is the voice of the narrator, who is, generally, the kind of lost-and-pretty-and-proudly-superficial girl you kinda wanna smack, or maybe marry.

that just made it sound horrible, i know, and it isn't, at all-- these stories are amazingly conceived and perfectly written and very, very funny. the only thing is, when i get to the end of them, all i feel is a little sad, a little happy, a little glad it's over. it never really takes you THROUGH anything. it's not a book you need tissues for.

it's a lot like Etgar Keret, actually. except american, and female.

[Nadine Larter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have I mentioned that I love Aimee Bender yet? I wonder: If I start experimenting with drugs would I be able to come up with this sort of writing? That would be great. Pity I can't afford drugs. Silly drugs, I mean, of course. Like mushrooms or whatever it is that makes things look a little brighter and sparklier. I'm giving this book a 5 because I think that being the type of person who writes these sort of weird and confusing-for-most-people stories is kind of important. Year ago when I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake I did not love it as I expected to because I hadn't been expecting magical realism (I knew little of the genre back then) and I was almost frightened by the darkness of it. I have kind of evolved since then, and am honestly kind of writing in that direction myself now. I have become more open to obscure voices sharing beautiful content. I am so grateful to be meeting these voices. They are growing me. Even when I don't like them, they are growing me. I have learned to set aside expectations and receive what I am given instead of bemoaning what I have not. I cannot help now but envy Ms. Bender. How free she is in spirit. How unconventionally wise. How odd. How exquisite. How real. I should read Lemon Cake with my fresher eyes now. Soon.

[Nefariousbig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduced to Aimee Bender by "This American Life". Master of intriguing short stories that connect the reader to the characters. I feel the need to read all of Aimee's stuff just to make sure I am not missing some sort of amazing feeling I have not felt before.

The nameless "finding guy" made me cry:

"He lay in bed that night with the trees from other places rustling, and he could feel their confusion. No snow here. Not a lot of rain. Where am I? What is wrong with this dirt? Crossing his hands in front of him, he held onto his shoulders. Concentrate hard, he thought. Where are you? Everything felt blank and quiet."

[LW · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

Stile nervoso, essenziale
Mondi strani e improbabili e al tempo stesso terribilmente veri, iper-reali
capaci di mettere a nudo le nostre paure ,le nostre ossessioni, i nostri desideri più profondi
In alcuni racconti è come camminare a piedi nudi sulla battigia ,tra pezzi di vetro
Non ci sono sussurri ,lo dice bene il titolo della raccolta
Ce n'è uno che potrebbe avere come colonna sonora
Smack my bitch up dei Prodigy https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kQ6C8c...#
anzi , è scritto come fosse quel video, crudo , spiazzante ,uno dei migliori
(assomiglia ad un film girato con il telefonino ,come tipo di approccio )

Straniante ma interessante la scrittura di Aimée Bender
3/4 stelle

[Jessada_K · Rating 3 out of 5]

เล่มนี้เราว่าแปลไม่ค่อยดี ดูขาดๆเกินๆ
บางเรื่องเราค่อนข้างชอบมากๆ แต่บางเรื่องก็เฉยมากๆ แต่ก็มีบางความรู้สึกที่หนังสือเล่มนี้มอบให้นั้นก็คือ แรงบันดาลใจอะไรบางอย่างที่เราได้รับจากหนังสือเล่มนี้

[Shweta Padma Das · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Imaginative. Heavy on personification. Preferred the stories in the first section over the latter two - more state of mind stories.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this collection in high school, loved it despite not really 'getting' any of it, and over the past few years would crack it open every now and then to read the first two stories—"The Remember," and "Call My Name." "The Rememberer," because I'm continually moved by that story's narrator; her grace and her grief. And "Call My Name," because I'm always amazed at the way Bender can get a reader [specifically, me] to sympathize with characters who lack any redeeming qualities whatsoever. [I also admire the way Bender navigates the tragedy and the inherent humor in that narrator's disposition; how her self-delusion/narcissism is both very, very sad and very, very funny.]

Over the past few days, I decided to give the whole collection a read-through and see if I couldn't hang my hat on the stories that came after these two favorites as well. As was the case in high school, there are still a few of these stories I just did not, for lack of a better word, get. A story like "Marzipan," though I much enjoyed the sentence-level writing and thought the premise itself was inventive, still left me unsatisfied and feeling like I'd missed the set-up, the punchline, or both. I felt that way about a few other stories, too—like "Legacy" and "Drunken Mimi." While I don't doubt there's intention at work in those stories, it was certainly lost on me.

That said, I love so fiercely the other stories in this collection that I quickly forgive those stories [and "The Healer," too, which seems to be a favorite here but left me puzzled] and applaud the rest. "What You Left in the Ditch," "Fugue," "Dreaming in Polish,"—these are wonderful stories. My favorite story of the bunch, though, is "Skinless." If you held a gun to my head I couldn't tell you why, only that it made me feel immensely hopeful and inestimably sad at the same time, which is the work of short fiction. Which leads me to what I've come away with after the re-read: the idea that, in Bender's stories, understanding is not nearly as important as evocation. What the stories bring to the surface in the reader surely matters more than anything else.

[Irina Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is considerably bleaker than The Color Master, but still has that dreamy, dark fairy tale vibe that drew me in so effectively in that collection.

The reason why it didn't work so well for me is the fact that the symbolism is much more heavy-handed and clumsy, and the slight absurdity of magical realism feels less natural and smoothly blended in than it does in Aimee Bender's later work.

In short, it's an extremely engaging and quite unsettling little treat, written with Bender's usual superlative skill with words, but not necessarily her best creation.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

as always... top notch

Merged review:

"Books are the mirrors of the soul."
Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts


take Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa, especially the writing style and slight drips of metaphysicalness, spirituality, and imagery, slather it with Haruki Murakami; but don't over do it. Add a dash of Karen Russell (when she is on her game).... and you have this book.

these stories, while completely, definitely grounded in their ownness, are somehow linked. The linking is personal, and grounds the read, or at least it did for me. It's difficult to explain, but for the most part I found myself able to identify personally with every story, and curtail its meaning around my history—present and past—advancing this long, expansive trajectory. It's remarkably scary in its depth and honesty, nakedness and realness. It's jagged around the edges, but a warm and assuring hug in the middle. It whispers "it will all be ok" and it honestly means it.


A link to my favorite, below recalled the raw, gnawing, realness of mental illness (or death, or whatever feelings rush in) and completely shattered me word by word.


the rememberer


Personally, it was my 'Mia Michaels moment' of the series (see below for visual)....




I kid you not, dear goodreader's this one made me tear up, and that is a rarity. If you can not connect to this story to a bad break up, your own mental illness or a loved one, or terminally ill grandparents/parent's then you are heartless... terribly and absolutely heartless.

Calling these amazing gems short stories is a disservice. They aperitifs, sliding down your throat after a long cry. Some will hurt, and you will buckle over, holding your stomach, as if your insides might burst open. Some glide across your palate effortlessly and kindly, relieving inward and outward pain. Others are a shade of gray, some learning towards the darker side of the color wheel, while others are dashed with heavy white tones.

good god the first story crushed my soul, spit it out, and folded it back into pieces....

[Emanuela · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'autrice pubblica questa raccolta all'età di ventinove anni.
Vederla seduta nell'auditorium al Festivalletteratura di Mantova sembra che il tempo per lei si sia fermato. Oggi ne ha quarantatre.

E' una Signora -inizialmente l'avevo presa per una ragazzina- dal viso aperto, allegra, serena e si direbbe del nostro sud e invece l'accento tradisce la sua provenienza californiana. Ma sempre di sud si tratta.
Gesticola, sorride. Alla domanda: "Ma a lei come vengono in mente le situazioni dei suoi racconti?" risponde per niente indispettita: "Ad esempio per 'La ragazza con la gonna in fiamme' mi trovavo in un negozio di abbigliamento con un'amica e alla cassa era affisso un cartello con preghiera alle clienti di portare indietro un tipo di gonna che si era rivelata di un tessuto estremamente infiammabile."

In effetti traspare, leggendo queste strane fiabe dove i protagonisti sono spesso adolescenti, l'esercizio creativo che ha come input un fatto più o meno plausibile, dal quale si diramano visioni surreali, spesso interrotte così come in un sogno che finisce all'improvviso, ma in cui il teenager narrante osserva il mondo con l'atteggiamento tipico di capire la realtà attraverso i suoi estremi, nella più candida inconsapevolezza delle conseguenze dei propri atti e pensieri.

Trovo che sia un modo, questo di scrivere, un brainstormig liberatorio con un flusso ininterrotto che pesca nel profondo, di ciò che è irrisolto, ma allo stesso tempo terapeutico a tal punto da rallentare i segni del tempo, così come la Bender lascia intuire di sè. Magico.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book in a while which I've actually felt some hatred towards. I began to cringe every time I picked it up, but I hate to not finish a book (especially one this small; surely I can power through it I kept telling myself). So thank god that's done. Several of the stories had pretty much the exact same type of female protagonist - vain, superficial, vapid, and horny. It started to bother me that I was essentially reading about the same dumb bitch in completely different plot lines. I couldn't escape her. When the stories weren't about these bimbos they were just random, rambling stories centering on one weird occurrence and ending up nowhere. There was no plot or point to any of these stories. The only saving grace, and the only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1, is because occasionally the author would write some pretty cool descriptions. But a few pretty sentences are not worth it. Now I'm not sure if I should even try The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake since this one was so disappointing. Boo.

[Jason Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first time I read this, I gave it four stars. Recently I had to reread it for a fiction class, and after poring over it a second time, I have no choice but to lower the score to a three. Initially, I think I was enchanted with Bender's work due to her unique plots and characters. Following my second run through, I can't say that there were many characters I liked, and the characters I did like usually weren't the protagonists.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

An heiress secretly auditioning men; a wife whose husband returns from the war zone with no lips; a woman who gives birth to her mother; a mermaid going to high school; two mutant girls – one with an ice hand dripping healing water, and the other with a fire hand lighting cigarettes after school hours; an orphan with a knack for finding lost things; an old couple who dreamt the same dreams. And life in between.

This short story collection was sold to me as a gallery of interesting women and some of the stories in it were indeed interesting, really atmospheric, and weird, which made them seem too short. There was only one I didn’t like and didn’t see the point of it, but all-in-all, this was a really captivating read.

[top. · Rating 1 out of 5]

รวมเรื่องสั้นที่แปลกประหลาดทั้งพล็อตและวิธีเล่าเรื่อง คือสมาธิต้องดีมากเพราะเรื่องไม่ได้ดำเนินไปตามครรลองปกติ จึงไม่แปลกที่คนอ่านสมาธิสั้นอย่างนี่จะอ่านรู้เรื่องบ้างไม่รู้เรื่องบ้าง

เรื่องที่อ่านรู้เรื่องและสนุกกั��มันคือ

(1)
เพื่อนชายกลายเป็นวานร
- เหมือนเรื่องย้อนวิวัฒนาการของเอคุนิที่เพิ่งอ่าน

จะตามติดชิดใกล้
- มีกลิ่นมุราคามิ เวอร์ชั่นฮาร์ดคอร์

(2)
ห้องสมุดหรรษา
- บรรณารักษ์เพิ่งเสียพ่อ จึงระบายด้วยการซั่มหนุ่มทุกคนที่เดินมาเคาน์เตอร์ ปิดด้วยซีนเพดานนางฟ้า

(3)
เขียวใสแสง มรกต
- ชอบรสนิยมของตัวละคร และพล็อตเรื่อง

จาก 16 เรื่องเราชอบแค่นี้แหละ ถ้านี่คือเล่มที่เด็ดสุดของเอมี่ เราน่าจะจูนกันยากละ เห็นเม้นท์ฝรั่งเอาเทียบกับงานเขียนของ Miranda July แต่เราไม่เคยอ่าน ถ้าเอาใกล้เคียงก็น่าจะ Get in Trouble ของ Kelly Link มะ เพียงแต่เล่มนั้นอ่านรู้เรื่อง จึงสนุกกับโลกของผู้เขียนกว่ามาก

ว่าแล้วก็อยากอ่านงานเคลลี่อีกจัง

[Evan St. Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Each story in this collection gets at least a 4 from me. The bizarro realism Bender employs is refreshing and inspiring. Tales range from whimsical and silly to gut-wrenching and heavy, often within the same story.

Can’t wait to get my hands on Aimee Bender’s other collections!

[Nawara H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

อ่านก็ได้ ไม่อ่านก็ได้
นี่ตั้งแต่อ่านงานของ Aimee Bender มาก็ยังไม่ชอบเล่มไหนเลย แต่ก็ผูกจิตจะอ่านต่อ เพราะสนใจการสร้างองค์ประกอบเพี้ยนๆ เป็นองค์แบบเดียวกับที่ Miranda July มี

[Yulia]

It was suggested she was a female Etgar Keret, but Keret is far more artful and thoughtful in his shorts. Whereas I have the sense he's a melancholy and thoughtful man who hides his sensitivity with a cuddly veneer, I feel Bender is a Keret-wannabe who hides her lack of insight and wisdom with her cute, "imaginative" story lines.

[Rossy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strange stories, not interested in any.

[Anna Roudebush · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short stories were, for me, a reminder of why fiction exists. They are raw, boundary-pushing, and relatable in ways you'd never admit to on your own. I only wished there were more.

[Carloesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non ho ancora letto i romanzi della Bender. Questo suo libro d'esordio (l'originale risale al '98), una raccolta di racconti mediamente brevi, è comunque sorprendente e lascia intravedere il carattere di una scrittrice estremamente inventiva, originale e fantasiosa, che molto deve a Kafka, ma altrettanto a Carver (da cui discende anche il Murakami - che di Carver è stato traduttore in giapponese - dei migliori racconti). La sua capacità di sintetizzare e quindi di padroneggiare l'arte del racconto ad alti livelli è totale. Altre cose, anche più interessanti di queste mie poche righe, sono state dette in un paio di commenti che mi precedono, e, condividendoli pienamente, non intendo ripetere o aggiungere alcunchè. Semmai solo che mi accingerò presto ad assaggiare anche Bender romanziera. Con molta fiducia.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was marvelous. Each and every story surprised me somehow. I think my favorite one was "The Healer"; a lot of the images in this collection will stick with me for a long time.

[Fefi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Non ci ho capito nulla!
Troppo surreale, forse un senso c'è in questi brevi racconti, ma a me non hanno lasciato niente.