For the first time in a long time, I found myself reluctant to turn the pages because I didn't want the book to end. Each short story is a wacked out microcosm that show how absurdity, implausibility and real life are just a spectrum, Lennon's characters and their honest to god humanity shines through, even in the zombies (yes this book has zombies!). He keeps it painfully real, a tough feat in the realm of speculative fiction, and he owns every word of it. Absolutely brilliant book.

Pretty good collection of short stories focusing on the suburban ennui of mostly early to mid 30s professionals. A few of the stories hinge on the supernatural in a subtle, though not uninteresting way. These are the least of the stories in the collection though. The best ones nuzzle up to the moment when we realize it's possible the worst is going to happen. Such as Total Humiliation in 1987 where a family on the verge of falling apart go to a vacation home they visit yearly for a couple of weeks and find a time capsule from a previous family. In Hibachi, a couple whose life dullness becomes interrupted only for the husband becomes paralyzed gets a lift when it seems like the wife becomes erotically charged by Hibachi grilling. All in all, not bad.

A portal to another universe discovered in a suburban backyard. A dead loser friend who is brought back to life. A roommate who sculpts a more-than-lifelike replica of his own head out of clay. A list of accursed items. These are the stories that inhabit J. Robert Lennon’s collection of short fiction, which draws on 15 years of work. These pieces are delightfully odd, charmingly bizarre, and darkly comic.

These stories are so strange and surreal. Lennon has such a unique writing style that I'm dying to read more of. However, I think that the first three stories were the weakest and I almost abandoned the collection completely because of them. Fortunately, "Hibachi" turned the collection around. "Hibachi" and "Weber's Head" were my favorites.

Also, I think I've found my new favorite description of a woman.

"Ruperta was an arrangement of pleasing roundness, wide round eyes nestled in wide round glasses, surrounded by black parentheses of hair set atop a full, pink melon head. Her body was all balls stuck to balls: a snowman of flesh. She was my type—indeed, the perfect expression of it."

If a man calls you a "snowman of flesh," marry him.

Well the stories did a have good range of premises, none of them really stood out for me.

very nice, eerie collection of stories. while all the characters sort of felt like the same person (scared man, bored woman), i liked that i could end each chapter feeling a different sort of disconcerted.

my favorites in no particular order were Hibachi, Total Humiliation in 1987, No Life, and A Stormy Evening At Buck Snort Restaurant.

A solid collection, mostly domestic stories with a dark creepiness lurking, which provide much of the narrative momentum. Light on weight and epiphany for my tastes, but a good collection that gets better as it goes.