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Published Sep 2017
224 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
A dazzling new collection of stories from the critically acclaimed author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for The Day.
Ben Loory returns with a second collection of timeless tales, inviting us to enter his worlds of whimsical fantasy, deep empathy, and playful humor, in the signature voice that drew readers to his highly praised first collection. In stories that eschew literary realism, Loory's characters demonstrate richly imagined and surprising perspectives, whether they be dragons or swordsmen, star-crossed lovers or long-lost twins, restaurateurs dreaming of Paris or cephalopods fixated on space travel.
In propulsive language that brilliantly showcases Loory's vast imagination, Tales of Falling and Flying expands our understanding of how fiction can work and is sure to cement his reputation as one of the most innovative short-story writers working today.
"Starred Review. Delightfully disarming stories for readers seeking a plunge down the rabbit hole." - Kirkus
"Life and death are treated with equal gravity and levity in this nimble, refreshing collection of shorts from Loory (Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day). Each of these stories is a deceptively small bite, its depth of flavor often growing and lingering." - Publishers Weekly
"Ben Loory's stories are little gifts, strange and moving and wonderfully human. I devoured this book in one sitting." - Ransom Riggs, author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
"Russell Edson's new protégé, or Steven Millhauser, distilled into tea. Meet, or re-meet Ben Loory, whose preposterous, friendly stories can't help but charm. They are so bizarrely readable they don't even feel like they're made of words." - Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Ben Loory is a wonder. I'd like to curl up inside his marvelous head and canoodle with a besotted squid, swallow a tiny dragon, levitate with Death and fall in love with the Eiffel Tower, and after reading these sublime stories - slyly funny, melancholy, and deeply weird - I suppose I have, and it was fantastic." - Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls
"Who the hell is this guy? What happened to make this brain? These are the questions you'll ask after Ben Loory's Tales of Falling and Flying. Loory is the psychedelic Aesop of our modern age, the king of talking birds and frogs, characters named war and peace, the Apuleius of the internet generation. His words are full of swords and wings. Get ready. They'll cut you. They'll make you fly." - Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book
"To read a Ben Loory story is to slip through a portal into an adjacent dimension. To learn - with brevity and clarity - the laws of this universe next door, new rules of logic and contradiction and truth. And, in the end, to be left with the disturbing and wondrous feeling of having never left home at all." - Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
"These tiny off-kilter fairy tales, equal parts Beckett and Twilight Zone, will amply suit surrealistic seniors and twisted teens alike. Perfect for reading on strange beaches and by oddly-shaped swimming pools. Fits right in your pocket or purse for emergency doses of the charming and weird." - Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
This information about Tales of Falling and Flying 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.
Ben Loory is the author of the collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, READ Magazine, and Fairy Tale Review, been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts, performed live at WordTheatre in Los Angeles and London, and translated into many languages, including Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, and Indonesian. A graduate of Harvard and the American Film Institute, Loory lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.
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