Book Summary and Reviews of The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt

The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt

The Dark Dark

Stories

by Samantha Hunt

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  • Published:
  • Jul 2017, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the acclaimed author of Mr. Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt's first collection of stories, The Dark Dark, blends the literary and the fantastic and brings us characters on the verge - girls turning into women, women turning into deer, people doubling or becoming ghosts, and more.

Step into The Dark Dark, where an award-winning, acclaimed novelist debuts her first collection of short stories and conjures entire universes in just a few pages - conjures, splits in half, mines for humor, destroys with absurdity, and regenerates. In prose that sparkles and haunts, Samantha Hunt playfully pushes the bounds of the expected and fills every corner with vibrant life, imagining numerous ways in which the weird might poke its way through the mundane. Each of these ten haunting, inventive tales brings us to the brink - of creation, mortality and immortality, infidelity and transformation, technological innovation and historical revision, loneliness and communion, and every kind of love.

Laced with lyricism, hope, Hunt's characteristic sly wit, and her unflinching gaze into the ordinary horrors of human existence, The Dark Dark celebrates the mysteries and connections that swirl around us. It's never all the same, Hunt tells us. It changes a tiny bit every time. See for yourself.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Stared Reviews. Grab your comforter and a flashlight for this tour de force collection from one of our most inventive storytellers." - Kirkus

"Starred Review. [Hunt] describes an uncle as being 'so good at imagining things he makes the imagined things real.' This excellent, inventive collection does the same; it is rife with observant asides, sly humor, and surprises." - Publishers Weekly

"Admirers of Hunt's Splitfoot will find much to love in the effortless writing, indelible images, and unforgettable stories in this collection." - Library Journal

"The Dark Dark reads like a feminist manifesto threaded through imaginative fiction; it's the most evocative, impressive collection I've read this year." - The Paris Review

This information about The Dark Dark was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Samantha Hunt Author Biography

Samantha Hunt's The Seas, her debut novel, won a National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. She is also the author of Mr. Splitfoot, Dark, Dark: Stories, and The Invention of Everything Else. Hunt's writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney's, A Public Space, Tin House, Cabinet, among others.

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Other books by Samantha Hunt at BookBrowse
  • The Seas jacket
  • Mr. Splitfoot jacket
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Read-Alikes

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  • Mr. Splitfoot jacket

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    A contemporary gothic from an author in the company of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender, Mr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning.

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