Combines the otherworldliness of Jeff VanderMeer's "Annihilation," the
menacing irony of Shirley Jackson and the cold feminist fury of Margaret
Atwood --The New York Times Book Review
**
Named a Fall Read by The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune**
**
The mundane becomes sinister in a disquieting story collection from the
author of** *The Grip of It
*
In Jac Jemc's dislocating second story collection, False Bingo, we
watch as sinister forces--some supernatural, some of this earth, some
real and some not--work their ways into the mundanity of everyday life.
In "Strange Loop," an outcast attempting to escape an unnamed mistake
spends his days taxiderming animals, while in "Delivery," a family
watches as their dementia-addled, basement-dwelling father succumbs to
an online shopping addiction. "Don't Let's" finds a woman, recently
freed from an abusive relationship, living in an isolated vacation home
in the South that might be haunted by breath-stealing ghosts.
Fueled by paranoia and visceral suspense, and crafted with masterful
restraint, these seventeen stories explore what happens when our fears
cross over into the real, if only for a fleeting moment. Identities are
stolen, alternate universes are revealed, and innocence is lost as the
consequences of minor, seemingly harmless decisions erupt to sabotage a
false sense of stability. "This is not a morality tale about the
goodness of one character triumphing over the bad of another," the
sadistic narrator of "Pastoral" announces. Rather, False Bingo is a
collection of realist fables exploring how conflicting moralities can
coexist: the good, the bad, the indecipherable.
