A review by literatehedgehog
Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender

3.0

A collection of bizarre and more bizarre shirt stories. Sometimes, the bizarre aspect was slight - a family undergoes trauma, because they happen to have pumpkin heads and one child happens to have an iron head, or a man gets a new pet of a very small human man. Other times, the bizarre aspect was monumental and contorted my sense of the story's reality - a boy has keys for fingers, a lady has potato babies appear on her stove top. However, I most enjoyed the stories with no particular weirdness or magic, just people being a bit odd or out of place, like the ladies man and the starlet, or the two girl friends in the music store, or even the fruit and words store.

I could imagine Bender thinking, 'this type of story, but what if...' for many of these. I can admire that creativity, but sometimes it gets in the way of the emotions, or the symbolism becomes overpowering, and thus the story is only a vessel for the bizarre "what if" idea.

Bizarre (word of the day, apparently), unsettling, fascinating. I'd read other things by her, after a bit of a brain cleansing break.