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by Christian Moody
For fans of George Saunders and Haruki Murakami, Christian Moody delivers his debut speculative short story collection, Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds—tales of the strange beauty and shadowy fears that lurk beneath the surface of our everyday lives.
Best friends George and Elly start a hide-and-go-seek club inspired by their love of the game, which goes too far when Elly stays hidden for years. An orphan discovers that the trees on the outskirts of town have eyes that watch and record the town's inhabitants, threatening to expose their most vulnerable secrets. In a world with hardly any birds left, a struggling family lives alone in the woods, where the father begins to create mechanical birds which threaten the only life left. And a man working at a futuristic egg factory spots an anomaly in one of the eggs, which, along with the fact that his wife and daughter spontaneously get pregnant at the same time, sparks his journey to uncover the company's secrets.
Winner of the 2023 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, Moody's collection delights in the absurd and dystopian, weaving in themes of climate change, surveillance, privacy, and technology that coalesce into a profound statement about the mysteries of the human experience.
"Moody needs only four short stories and a novella to win over his audience; these strange, wonderful tales will enchant readers of all stripes, from the literary-minded to the speculative-loving…A brilliant collection of delightfully surreal tales that linger long after reading." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Moody's gorgeously lyrical stories of loss and transformation tread the border between the dream world and waking–fables infused with ordinary life, the quotidian set aglow with a loving and sinister magic." ―Dan Chaon, author of One of Us
"Christian Moody is a marvelous storyteller, somehow both innovative and old-fashioned. The stories in Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds are full of beauty, and also full of a creeping sense of menace and dread. You read these stories the way you would read the Brothers Grimm, and the modern masters Shirley Jackson and Kelly Link: with a sense of wonder at how well the author knows we humans at our best and at our worst. We are strange in our hearts, and these stories are gripping as they show how much it costs us to try and keep that strangeness hidden. Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds will keep you up at night and you will still be thinking about it the next morning. What a debut!" ―Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? and I, Grape
This information about Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds 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.
Christian Moody has been published in Esquire, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, the Best New American Voices anthology, the Best American Fantasy anthology, and more. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati. He was a creative writing professor for many years, and currently works as Brand Director for an e-commerce company. He lives in Indianapolis with his two kids and wife, memoirist and illustrator Margaret Kimball.
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