Weirdly good!

Unlike anything I've ever read before, bizarre, tragic and beautiful. I appreciate Bender's ability to let the reader sit with these strange little stories wherever they end. She doesn't try to over-explain or beat you over the head with a message. She simply dusts things off and lets them be in all of their odd beauty.

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.

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!

Pretty disappointing effort - Bender clearly possesses a lot of writing talent, but style bludgeons substance to death in every story. Too much was dependent on gimmicks, and characters had the depth of a bathtub with a hole in the bottom. Ugh, and the protagonists were mostly horrible, horrible people.

At any rate, A+ for grabbing the readers attention, F- for doing anything else.

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.

These stories really messed with my mind. Sometimes I looked around furtively as if someone could see that I was reading stories that were a combination of brilliant and very kinky. I was very intrigued but ultimately not completely sold. I may need to acquire more of a taste for her work. However it made me think of Karen Joy Fowler's short stories and that is definitely a compliment.

I love this quirky collection of short stories. I read this book a long time ago and recently reread it. The stories are still moving and funny and ridiculous and sharply written. I like this better than her novel. It seems as though she's unable to sustain all the good things about her short fiction in a longer work.

There were a lot of 5 star stories in this one, but a few of them didn't quite hit the same high mark and thus the overall rating ends on a 4 for me.

This is an amazing little collection about love, lust, grief and loneliness, mostly from a female perspective with a twist of magical realism. Loved it!

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.

This collection of short stories is, for some reason, divided into three parts.

Part One is the strongest. "The Rememberer" is a fascinating, magical tale about a dwindling relationship, although for a reason that no one has ever experienced in real life, but anyone can relate to. "Call My Name" is a semi-erotic tale of desire. "What You Left in the Ditch" is a tragic story of how to continue loving someone who has been disfigured in war (in this case losing nothing but his lips, which are so small yet so important). "The Bowl" is the short story equivalent of how you feel when someone waves to you, and you wave back, and you find out they're waving to someone behind you the whole time. And "Marzipan" is a freakish and delightful tale of grieving.

Part Two begins with "Quiet Please", yet another grieving story, but this one with a raucous erotic twist. "Skinless", as the title implies, is dark. It kind of reminds me of a depression version of the Brie Larson film Short Term 12. "Drunken Mimi" is a diverting fairy tale love story between an imp and a mermaid who are both masquerading as normal high school students. "Fugue" and "Fell This Girl" were less than memorable.

Part Three begins with "The Healer," one of the more inventive stories (And that's saying a lot) in the collection, about a girl with a hand of ice and another with a hand of fire. That's a keeper, worth the price of admission. Things get a little bit nutso with "Loser", "Legacy", and "The Ring," three stories that don't seem to grow much past their, admittedly brilliant, concepts. "Dreaming in Polish" was okay, and the title story, "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt" barely smoulders. It simply steams. The collection ends with a small puff of air instead of blazing inferno.

Part One: *****
Part Two: ****
Part Three: ***

Average: ****

When I came home from school for lunch my father was wearing a backpack made of stone.
Take that off, I told him, that's far too heavy for you.
So he gave it to me.
--from "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt"