I got this as an Early Reviewers book, but forgot to read it for awhile. I finally downloaded the Creative Commons ebook to my kindle and really enjoyed reading it over the last few days. I wasn't familiar with Kessel but will definitely be seeking out his other works.

This book is a volume of short stories, several links, some unsettling. Several took place in an interesting matriarchal society on the Moon. The last story is a Pride and Prejudice / Frankenstein mashup.

Definitely recommended. ( )

The theme of the stories in the book is that most of them are responses or homage to other works of fiction, most of which I am not familiar with. The opening story takes on Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, while some in the middle are responses to science fiction works, to the last story which combines Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein. I liked almost everything in the collection, with the exceptions being several of the more experimental stories toward the end.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

The Baum Plan for Financial Independence: And Other Stories is a collection of stories by John Kessel. The publisher, Small Beer Press, made the book available both through LibraryThing as an Early Reviewer title, and through the Small Beer website as a free PDF download (still available here as of May 12, 2008). As well as, you know, a book you can buy.

This book is worth purchasing solely for the story "Pride and Prometheus", in which Mary Bennett, the serious and studious Bennett sister from Pride and Prejudice, encounters Victor Frankenstein and for the first time in her life is moved by romantic feelings. Frankenstein is likewise drawn to Mary, but makes no secret that his motivations lie elsewhere. I don't want to spoil the story for anyone, so I will say only that this story is beautiful, serious, and heartfelt, never descending into parody or gimmickry.

The other story I was most interested in reading was the title story, "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence". In this story, the narrator picks up his relationship with Dot right where he left it off when he went to prison because of something the two of them did together. Because he can't refuse Dot anything, they break into a house Dot has heard contains a great deal of wealth, and are surprised when a passage from a bedroom closet leads to a train station that in turn leads to something like the Emerald City we know from Oz.

I found this story, and indeed most of the stories, very well written, but many of them, including "The Baum Plan", have an arbitrariness and/or lack of resolution that left me wanting something more. Kessel's prose contains lovely details, but there is sometimes a clean quietness to the stories that feels almost antiseptic, even when the characters are filled with strong emotion. One story, "The Snake Girl", appears to have no speculative element, which is certainly not a crime, but it reads a bit like the type of earnest literary magazine story that an intense college student writes just after suffering the end of his/her first profound relationship, rather than a story that offers any of its readers anything particular to think about.

Another story, "It's All True", is about a man who goes back into time (well, one timeline, anyway) to try and persuade Orson Welles to join him in a future that will appreciate his brilliance. (I understand that this universe is the same in which Kessel's novel Corrupting Dr. Nice takes place, although I did not recognize the connection myself.) This was a neat concept, and the resolution of the Welles element is generally satisfying, but I still came away with a slight feeling of "why does the story end here as opposed to anywhere else?" Also, in a few of the short-shorts, I felt as though the author clearly knew what was going on, but somehow I was missing critical information and/or the joke and/or the point. I also consider it a strength that Kessel does not browbeat the reader with clumsy exposition, but at the same time I felt like I often didn't get enough information to work with.

All that said, it's worth your time to take a look at this book. Different stories will appeal to different readers. And again, "Pride and Prometheus" is worth more than the price of admission (which is $0 if you do the download -- but it's still worth the actual price of the book!) all on its own, with an ending that is not only not arbitrary, but feels necessary and just right. ( )

(Amy) The short stories in this book range from "weird and interesting" to "weird and distasteful" to "weird and boring". The first category probably comprises the greatest proportion, fortunately, but nonetheless, it was very slow going, making it all the way to the end.

The title story (the first in the book) showed a promising concept - a bizarre edge-on take on a very, very different Wizard-of-Oz story - but in execution proved to be a) boring and b) gratuitous. I'm all in favor of retold tales, but I do generally prefer that the new version justify its existence by telling something different about the original story, or about life in general - or hell, just being entertaining. This story utterly failed to accomplish this, at least so far as I was concerned.

As for what the blurb text calls a "modern classic story sequence about life on the moon", well, it was entertaining enough. However, terribly sorry, but "female-dominant sex-positive society" is not shocking, it is not titillating, it is not insightful exploration of possible shapes of future humanity. It is practically cliched, and really reads like a series of wistful thought exercises by a frustrated fetishist. Enh.

I think the likelihood of me picking up another book by this author is best classified as "slim to none".
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