May We Shed These Human Bodies: Stories by Amber Sparks

It's hard to categorize the brief, surprising stories in Amber Sparks' collection. The title story, May We Shed These Human Bodies, is a creation fable, a lament in the first-person-plural voices of trees who have been turned into humans. Never-never is a melancholy retelling of Peter Pan told in multiple viewpoints. All the imaginary people are better at life is surrealist contemporary fiction:

   "Ruby can't stop driving, because if she stops she'll be somewhere. If she's somewhere, she'll be real. All the Ruby atoms in the vicinity will come to a screeching halt in the general shape of her. Then she'll have to deal with all of the issues real people deal with.
   No thank you.
   [...]
   Caleb, her imaginary best friend, calls on the space wires from Chicago to complain about the weather. The best part about Caleb is that he has a direct line into her head so she doesn't incur any long distance charges."

(In a strange coincidence, when I read All the imaginary people are better at life, I had just read a blog post from someone in Chicago who was complaining about the terrible weather they have been having.)

The stories are odd... in the best possible way. There's a great blurb from Ben Loory on the back of the book: "I always love a book that makes me fear for the writer's sanity." This may not always be true for me, but in the case of Amber Sparks, I agree with Loory.

Readalikes: Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (Etgar Keret); Vampires in the Lemon Grove (Karen Russell); Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Douglas Coupland) and Anthropology (Dan Rhodes).