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CRAZY LOVE stories by Leslie What ISBN: 978-1-877655-59-3 (59-WC) LCN: 2008921844 First trade paperback, 5.5 X 8.5, 200 pgs., $13.95, plus s/h (U.S. only) Cover art: "Wallpaper," Jessica Plattner Cover design: Kristin Summers, redbat design |
DESCRIPTION
2009 FINALIST FOR OREGON BOOK AWARD IN FICTION (KEN KESEY AWARD)
2009 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD
GOLD MEDALIST FOR SHORT STORY - FICTION,
AND FINALIST IN SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
LISTED AS ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY BY BOOKLIST.
2009 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD
GOLD MEDALIST FOR SHORT STORY - FICTION,
AND FINALIST IN SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
LISTED AS ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY BY BOOKLIST.
PRAISE FOR CRAZY LOVE
"'Queen of Gonzo' What (Olympic Games) drags love out of its gooey, schmaltzy rut and takes it for a joyride in this exuberant collection of 17 stories... No matter how brief or long, no matter how bizarre, each tales in this collection grabs readers and demands they rethink how they see all the myriad forms of love."
-- Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"An ace at the new weirdness defined by the anthology, Feeling Very Strange (2006), What uses it to be creepy, polemical, and funny, all at once or in various blendings. These 17 stories progress from grim to laugh-out-loud ludicrous without ever derogating their common subject, love, though they do depict it as fairly insane."
--The Booklist Starred Review (July 2008)
"Leslie What's wild and risk-taking fantasy tales have been largely overlooked, but her latest short story collection offers a great opportunity for wideer attention. 'Babies' is a blistering allegory of motherhood that fuses together bug exterminators, marital problems and obsessive solicitude in 13 pitch-perfect pages. The story's heroine carries the 'extra weight' and protective quality of human pregnancy, while mothering cockroaches that 'always came to her side whenver the bugman sprayed the landlord's kitchen.' 'Paper Mates' is a clever story in which paperwork quite literally reproduces like rabbits. What's stories, like Ray Bradbury's and Richard Matheson's, rely on high concepts to carry the narratives forward, but her prose works best when it is concise. Nearly every tale offers an unexpected surprise, but never feels too gimmicky. This is a universe in which one should never underestimate a woman in a ratty gorilla suit, even if her ability to 'speak' with gorillas may very well be her only means of communication."
-- Edward Champion, Washington Post Book World
(October 12 - 18, 2008
"This quirky short story collection has been almost completely overlooked by readers who look at the fantasy genre with the same frightened isolationism readily observed in George W. Bush’s move to a neighborhood terrified of non-Caucasian residents. That’s a great shame, because there are invaluable lessons here on how to take a wild idea and make it concise and enthralling. The collection contains unsettling allegories and gleefully imaginative premises. There isn’t a single story in here that doesn’t take some kind of narrative gamble. And while the dice-rolling doesn’t always pay off, it certainly remains hot in your hands."
--TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2008, written by Edward Champion, Washington Post reviewer, from his blog, Reluctant Habits,
"What demonstrates a gift for delving into heart-wrenching matters with a lightness of touch...Pain, joy, self-deception, guilt: these are the places 'crazy love' takes us. What know them well."
--L. Timmel Duchamp, American Book Review/Line on Line
"Ironic and uncompromising, Leslie What's collection is also unfailingly humorous and boldly creative, frequently outlandishly so. What has written an enlightening examination of the most crazy-making endeavor in which our species obsessively engages. It drives us crazy-Crazy Love."
--R.A. Rycraft, Pif Magazine
"If unbearable guilt makes you wish to suffer vicariously, and professionally, for others; if you suddenly find yourself the father of thousands and thousands of children; if your ambition is to occupy the Chair of Hermit Studies at the University of Oregon, or to be a ghost in a hot-air balloon, or if you have considered wearing a gorilla mask while having an abortion -- Crazy Love is your operating manual. These seventeen achingly funny and hilariously sad stories will give you invaluable advice on how to love, how to be crazy, how to be human."
-- Ursula Le Guin, author of Lavinia and The Left Hand of Darkness
"Crazy Love is crazy good! Leslie What's brain is evidently crowded with strangeness, awfulness, wonderfulness, wildness, madness of all kinds...and love. Lots of love. How lucky we are that her imagination runs deep, runs true, runs onto the page in crazily beautiful stories -- and lucky, so very lucky, to be holding those stories right now in our hands."
-- Molly Gloss, author of Dazzle of Day and The Hearts of Horses
"Count on Leslie What to give you something you never counted on. Original, delightful, and always, always surprising."
-- Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and Wit's End
-- Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"An ace at the new weirdness defined by the anthology, Feeling Very Strange (2006), What uses it to be creepy, polemical, and funny, all at once or in various blendings. These 17 stories progress from grim to laugh-out-loud ludicrous without ever derogating their common subject, love, though they do depict it as fairly insane."
--The Booklist Starred Review (July 2008)
"Leslie What's wild and risk-taking fantasy tales have been largely overlooked, but her latest short story collection offers a great opportunity for wideer attention. 'Babies' is a blistering allegory of motherhood that fuses together bug exterminators, marital problems and obsessive solicitude in 13 pitch-perfect pages. The story's heroine carries the 'extra weight' and protective quality of human pregnancy, while mothering cockroaches that 'always came to her side whenver the bugman sprayed the landlord's kitchen.' 'Paper Mates' is a clever story in which paperwork quite literally reproduces like rabbits. What's stories, like Ray Bradbury's and Richard Matheson's, rely on high concepts to carry the narratives forward, but her prose works best when it is concise. Nearly every tale offers an unexpected surprise, but never feels too gimmicky. This is a universe in which one should never underestimate a woman in a ratty gorilla suit, even if her ability to 'speak' with gorillas may very well be her only means of communication."
-- Edward Champion, Washington Post Book World
(October 12 - 18, 2008
"This quirky short story collection has been almost completely overlooked by readers who look at the fantasy genre with the same frightened isolationism readily observed in George W. Bush’s move to a neighborhood terrified of non-Caucasian residents. That’s a great shame, because there are invaluable lessons here on how to take a wild idea and make it concise and enthralling. The collection contains unsettling allegories and gleefully imaginative premises. There isn’t a single story in here that doesn’t take some kind of narrative gamble. And while the dice-rolling doesn’t always pay off, it certainly remains hot in your hands."
--TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2008, written by Edward Champion, Washington Post reviewer, from his blog, Reluctant Habits,
"What demonstrates a gift for delving into heart-wrenching matters with a lightness of touch...Pain, joy, self-deception, guilt: these are the places 'crazy love' takes us. What know them well."
--L. Timmel Duchamp, American Book Review/Line on Line
"Ironic and uncompromising, Leslie What's collection is also unfailingly humorous and boldly creative, frequently outlandishly so. What has written an enlightening examination of the most crazy-making endeavor in which our species obsessively engages. It drives us crazy-Crazy Love."
--R.A. Rycraft, Pif Magazine
"If unbearable guilt makes you wish to suffer vicariously, and professionally, for others; if you suddenly find yourself the father of thousands and thousands of children; if your ambition is to occupy the Chair of Hermit Studies at the University of Oregon, or to be a ghost in a hot-air balloon, or if you have considered wearing a gorilla mask while having an abortion -- Crazy Love is your operating manual. These seventeen achingly funny and hilariously sad stories will give you invaluable advice on how to love, how to be crazy, how to be human."
-- Ursula Le Guin, author of Lavinia and The Left Hand of Darkness
"Crazy Love is crazy good! Leslie What's brain is evidently crowded with strangeness, awfulness, wonderfulness, wildness, madness of all kinds...and love. Lots of love. How lucky we are that her imagination runs deep, runs true, runs onto the page in crazily beautiful stories -- and lucky, so very lucky, to be holding those stories right now in our hands."
-- Molly Gloss, author of Dazzle of Day and The Hearts of Horses
"Count on Leslie What to give you something you never counted on. Original, delightful, and always, always surprising."
-- Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and Wit's End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leslie What (Glasser) is a Nebula Award-winning writer and the author of a novel,Olympic Games, and a short story collection, The Sweet and Sour Tongue. She has worked as a charge nurse in a nursing home, in an unlocked psychiatric facility, as a manager for a low-income meal site, and as a maskmaker and artist. She currently teaches in The Writers' Program at UCLA Extension. Her work has been published in a number of anthologies and journals, including Parabola, Asimov's, The MacGuffin, Realms of Fantasy, The Clackamas Review, SciFiction and Midstream. Called "The Queen of Gonzo" by Gardner Dozois, her work has been translated into German, Italian, French, Japanese, Russian, Greek and Klingon.
LINK TO LESLIE WHAT'S WEBSITE