Nothing Is Strange by Mike Russell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This collection of absurdist vignettes follows in the footsteps of James Thurber, Bohumil Hrabal, and Donald Barthelme in offering social commentary on the modern human condition while riding the line between allegory and surrealism.
My life appeared strange because it was one way and not another. Only if it had been every possibility at once would it have not appeared strange. And that is what I am now: every possibility at once. And nothing is strange.
[from “Everything Was Strange”]
Not unlike a well-constructed poetry collection, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Themes surface and submerge only to re-emerge a few vignettes later. The prose is simple and exacting ensuring clarity of the absurd, Dali-esque situations presented.
On the subject of Romantic Relationships, two tales manage to paint the intangible. In “The…
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