The miniature wife and other stories (edition 2013)

Although I can't say that I liked all the stories in this collection I did like several. Among my favorites was the title story "Miniature Wife" and the first story about a high-jacked airplane, as well as the Mall story which kept my interest all the way through. It is hard to describe these stories, the best I can come up with is it is like falling asleep and having a really out there dream and than waking up and thinking "Where did that come from?" That is what some of these were like, and once again the imagination of the human mind can be astonishing. ( )

The Miniature Wife and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzalez is a bizarre collection of tales that at times reminded me of Kafka, not so much in style as in having all involved routinely accept sharp divergences from the reality we know. In the title story, for example, a husband who works at a "miniaturizing" facility finds his wife has somehow been accidentally miniaturized, and she's far from happy about it. Developing events would have made for a suitably creepy "Twilight Zone" entry, and her plight made me think of Gregor waking up as a sentient cockroach.

Some are just morbidly funny, like “Cash to a Killing,” where two hired killers kill the wrong guy, have to dig him back up because of a missing wallet, and then make a different, critical mistake.

Many are narrated in the first person by men who are badly coping with their given reality because of cluelessness, or mistaken views, or in one surprisingly haunting story, "All of Me" because of the protagonist's belief that he's a zombie when others can't see it. The one other zombie-based story, "Escape from the Mall", is probably the weakest story in the bunch, with the tip-off on the main plot development coming too early in the story. One quite poignant story is centered on what appears to be a captured unicorn (first perceived as a "pearlescent undersized horse") who viewers can't resist. Other stories include "The Disappearance of the Sebali Tribe" about an extraordinarily detailed anthropological and academic con job, and another, "The Artist's Voice", involves a composer whose classical music creations seem inextricably tied to his progressive physical deterioration.

Some have connected Gonzalez' writing to that of Borges, but I haven't read enough of Borges to do the same. It certainly is a high compliment. This is a talented author with a wide-ranging imagination and an understanding heart. Thanks to Mark for recommending this. Because these are short stories, it's hard to quote much without giving them away. Here's an example of the deadpan weirdness from the title story "The Miniature Wife":

"Only in hindsight did I find it odd that the door was unlocked. I expected to see her waiting for me on the kitchen counter or on the coffee table. I stepped gingerly around the house, the cups around my ears so that I might hear her. Then I heard a noise from the upstairs bedroom, where I kept her dollhouse. Of course, I thought. The dollhouse! How silly of me to have forgotten!" ( )

A hijacked commercial airliner, stuck in a holding pattern, high above Dallas International, for….20 years. How the beleaguered passengers cope is a revelation. A man learns his best friend has just bought a beer-drinking unicorn, from a shady, Chinese street vendor and keeps it in a pen in his yard. These are just a couple of the wonderful, slightly bent, magically surreal stories in this collection. There are werewolves, clowns, zombies, hit men and yes, there is a miniature wife as well, which brought back fond memories of the camp Sci-Fi classic “The Incredible Shrinking Man“, although this wife is very pissed and ready to do battle.
Gonzales is an impressive talent and he delivers his prose in a straight-forward manner, with dead-pan humor, fresh imagination and genuine love for his off-beat and mostly desperate characters. This was another recent E.R. gem. I have been very lucky with my last several acquisitions. ( )

I was pleasantly surprised by the oddity of these stories. From the opening surrealism of the perpetually circling airliner over Dallas through the more fantastic creatures and monsters at the end, I enjoyed the faint sadness at the core of almost everything. The disconnect between people, due to distance, size, ability, obligation, undeath, alien attack, jealousy, distraction, obsession, and panic are what really pulled me in. ( )

I loved these stories! The title story might be my favorite of the past year or so. These are stories about an average person in demented, unreal, impossible situations (evading zombies, dealing with a miniaturized wife, trying to steal a unicorn, etc.). Obviously not realistic situations, but realistic characters. How would you deal with your father if he turned into a werewolf?

Delightful. I started reading the first story and got sucked in, reading a good chunk of it right then and making myself late for dinner. ( )