Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead: Stories by Anya Johanna DeNiro

Description

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is Minneapolis-based poet and writer A. DeNiro's wide-ranging and assured debut fiction collection. DeNiro's stories have been published in the most forward-looking magazines includingFence, Crowd, One Story, Strange Horizons,and3rd Bed. These stories skitter sideways across literary and genre fiction categories, using the toolbox of genres like science fiction and fantasy to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics. DeNiro is show more frequently funny, surreal, or slapstick, but these stories also connect with readers on an emotional level, in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in the oddest of DeNiro's stories, characters are real people grappling with real relationships, real heartbreaks, the small, cruel, pinprick absurdities of a universe which is larger and stranger than most writers ever realize. A MAN LOSES his leg in a war, and a field doctor sews on a fairy tale in its place. A woman excavates her living room in order to discover what has become of her marriage. The Byzantine army invades a small college town. Giants move in next door. A boy in a town called Suddenly falls in love with a girl who lives in the Lake of the Dead. The secret history of Erie -- past, present, and future -- is revealed. show less

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3 reviews

omnia_mutantur 154 reviews

Some of these shorts blew me away. "Our Byzantium" "Cuttlefish" and "Salting the map" are some of my favorite things I've read this year. Unfortunately, not all the stories were of the same caliber, so it was a very rollercoaster experience.

Aug 3, 2013

jlspad 250 reviews

The rules in Deniro’s stories aren’t the everyday real world rules, because his stories are disconcertingly, wonderfully not set in the everyday real world.
http://12frogs.com/reading/reviews/2009/07/skinny-dipping-in-the-lake-of-the-dea...

½

Jul 12, 2009