Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

Starred review from November 22, 2021
Poet and novelist Fu (The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore) delivers a stellar story collection that grounds tales of magical realism in her characters’ emotional realities. In “Liddy, First to Fly,” preteen narrator Grace and her friends pop the bumps on Liddy’s legs, prompting the appearance of feathers and wings. The mysterious development dovetails with the friends’ own normal pubescent changes, and Grace muses, “The realm of pretend had only just closed its doors to us, and light still leaked through around the edges.” “Time Cubes,” set in a mall where kiosks sell cubes that demonstrate the life cycles of plants and animals, follows a woman named Alice who lives and works in the building as a lab tech. Identifying as a “Depressive Insider,” she goes to therapy in the mall and she tries dating apps. In “Sandman,” a hooded figure shows up in the night on a woman named Kelly’s bed wearing a robe that contains a multitude of sand, which Kelly, who is unafraid of the sandman and suffers from insomnia, is eager to consume. An earnest coworker gives Kelly tips to help her sleep, but the sandman becomes her salvation. Fu’s stories crackle with quirky plots, and her characters’ problems and hunger for new possibilities are palpable. This is a winner. Agent: Jackie Kaiser, Westwood Creative Artists.

June 1, 2022

Twelve impossibly unique tales make up Fu's (The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore) story collection about things that go bump in the night, lurk in the shadows, and cavort in the daylight. Each of the unlinked stories introduces a different "monster" and takes place in the modern world--at a vendor show, in a suburb, at a dinner show, in an old house. Fu delights in giving us wholly new and imaginative monsters that defy expectations. There's a career woman who can fall asleep at night only if she is visited by the sandman; a haunted doll that gives nightmares to neighborhood children; a preteen who sprouts wings on her ankles to the delight of her friends; and a bug-infested house that steadily grows more unstable. Piper Goodeve and Sean Patrick Hopkins narrate with calm, earnest deliveries that make the stories even more intense. VERDICT Thrilling, sexy, scary, and daring, this is a gem of a short story collection.--Erin Cataldi

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.