The Start of the End of It All
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | The Start of the End of It All: Short Fiction |
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| Author: | Carol Emshwiller |
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| Publisher: | Mercury House |
Replete with fierce humor and insight, Carol Emshwiller’s stories turn reality upside down. Humans are seen by soaring bird-men as those creatures “with heavy thighs, flat faces, funny little teeth all in a row.” And everyday life is seldom predictable: One morning a man awakens in his small, neat apartment to find a winged, naked woman with wild eyes.
Emshwiller’s tales are full of ordinary people discovering extraordinary lives. In “The Circular Library of Stones,” a woman finds a buried library in which she daily makes startling archaeological finds. In another story, a woman suddenly decides to move in with the man across the street whom she has watched for months but never talked to. As she moves her plants and throw-rug into his apartment while he is asleep, she asks herself, “Why hadn’t she ever taken action before, even there, in that old drab world next door?”
Through Emshwiller’s high-powered lens we see not only human cruelty and loneliness but also the search for love and fantasy fulfilled. In her inimitable style, Emshwiller offers new myths for a mixed-up age.
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