Stranger on the Loose by D. Harlan Wilson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.94 You Save: $4.01 (34%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.44 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Stranger on the Loose
Book Review: Wilson is the Salvador Dali of the short story
Summary: 5 Stars
If Salvador Dali had been a writer and not a painter, he would've written stories like these. This collection of short stories equals the absurdity of Alice in Wonderland times 100. Some of the outstanding stories are:
"Restaurant": As an introduction to this guy's style, it hit me the hardest. If a restaurant served you a human tongue, what would you do about it? I read this as part of the sampler for an online download version of this book. The sample stopped halfway, and I just had to read the rest! Never read anything like it before in my life and it hooked me in.
"Cops and Bodybuilders": What would happen if a bodybuilder broke into your house and started posing? Pure absurdity. Real fun.
"Glacier": A man, his wife and his prepubescents try to survive a glacier that has suddenly appeared in suburbia. WTF?!
"Digging for Adults": I laughed out loud at just the title, and it only gets better.
"Community": I never realized snapping Achilles tendons could be so freakin funny!
"Professor Dyspeptical's Parrot": A college professor gets a parrot to teach his lectures so he can have time off. Why didn't I think of that?
"Pityriasis Park": The park is empty, so the townspeople pretend to be the park. WTF, you ask? It's great.
"Igsnay Burdd The Animal Trainer": A novelette that will make you chuckle. World-famous animal trainer is going to get paid half a billion dollars to train one animal. What kind of animal is this?
Some of the stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious. Others are merely odd. Still others are disgustingly bizarre. And then there are a few that are just weird for weirdness' sake.
My only complaint is that this collection probably should've been only half as long. After you pass the halfway point on the page count you actually get used to the absurd, surreal happenings and some of the stories become almost passé. But who cares! Wilson is the Salvador Dali of the short story. In the mood for something different to read? Give it a try.
Book Review: Writer on the Loose
Summary: 5 Stars
Stranger on the Loose, D. Harlan Wilson's follow-up to The Kafka Effekt, will cause a literary meltdown in your sanity-cortex if you don't read it with a decent amount of valium and good hit of milk plus. In this book, Wilson maps out the boundaries of a schizopolis, a freakified city in which pumped-up bodybuilders invade people's privacy and antagonize them with their poses; small, hobbitlike elephants pour out of manholes and ransack seemingly docile, sane neighborhoods; restaurant-goers bump off entire staffs of waiters, cooks, bartenders and busboys when they are served human tongues for dinner against their will; intellectual parrots teach frat boys and sorority girls how to read Freud; firemen replace the sirens on their fire engines with screaming yaks; flaneurs impersonating bowling pins search for people to impersonate bowling pins and knock them down. If you like dark comedy, check out the stories in this book - they won't disappoint you. Highly recommended!Book Review: an assault on one's preconceived notions
Summary: 5 Stars
Stranger on the Loose by D. Harlan Wilson is another collection of wonderful, kafkaesque stories from the same writer who brought us The Kafka Effekt. While the first book seemed to be more an experiment in experimental minimalism, and absurd realities, these stories continue that thread, but expand on it to let loose a barrage of humor, wit, and subtle philosophical overtones. This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting into the surrealist movement (before jumping off into other writers I have reviewed). A very easy and light read, makes this book a wonder to the senses, and an assault on one's preconceived notions. Read it, enjoy it, then go out and get more surreal literature. Go Now!Book Review: kafka effekt revisited
Summary: 5 Stars
this is the usual type of extremely high quality material from d. harlan. elements of absurdism with a clear surrealist (or as d. harlan likes to say, 'irrealist') influence, these stories are a joy to read. this book took forever to come out and kept getting pushed back...which only made me lust for it harder. well worth the wait, id buy anything this guy puts out. check out his e-book at www.bizarrebooks.com