Cold, sleet, snow. Whether it’s from illness or just fear of the cold, unforgiving outdoors, being stuck in bed all day can cause your mind to go to some strange places. While others might encourage you to resist this temptation, Chicago Public Library (or at least this blogger) says “lean in!”
Explore your strange side with these surreal selections from our shelves.
With his garish theme park settings and trademark, menacingly buoyant corporate-speak, CivilWarland in Bad Decline is a great introduction to the work of George Saunders. Mixing humor and sincerity, these near-future satires unveil the cruel incentives that undergird modern life. Laughing, crying, and laughing while crying are all to be expected!
In Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi, a queer couple's romantic ride on a sleeper car train turns out to contain strange and unnatural passengers all with stories of their own. Featuring tales within tales and bizarre narrative cul-de-sacs, this honeymoon proves to be a trip in more than one sense of the word.
Paranoia abounds in Daniel Clowes's Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. Local loser Clay Loudermilk is wasting time watching a movie when, all of a sudden, his estranged wife pops up on screen, and he sets off to win her back. The nightmarish imagery he encounters is not for the faint of heart!
It's the biting playfulness her work that comes to the fore in painter, sculptor and novelist Leonora Carrington's 1974 work, The Hearing Trumpet. With bizarre nursing homes, winking nuns, and a conspiracy that goes to the heart of history itself, this Björk-approved novel will have you smiling throughout.
Who or what could possibly shake Moscow out of its Stalinist terror? In The Master and Margarita, MIkhail Bulgakov provides one possible answer: the Devil, a naked red-haired witch, and a gigantic gun-toting black cat! The novel features mayhem that brings to mind the rubbery surreality of 30s cartoons, including a particularly memorable episode, the Devil's Spring Ball. One of the most ludicrous pieces of pandemonium in all of literature.
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