Incendiary Girls: Stories
“Eleven appealingly strange studies of bodies in crisis…an effective and surprising collection.”—Kirkus Reviews“Scheer is at her best when she sneaks in the fantastical elements, scattering bizarre episodes scattered in everyday settings and using these elements fantastical to reveal her characters' emotional states.”—Publishers Weekly“Kodi Scheer is a talented storyteller with a gift for writing untraditionally about the fragile nature of life. The stories in her debut collection, Incendiary Girls, are shocking, heartbreaking, humorous, and delicate. None of them is easily forgotten.”—Bookslut“Scheer’s stories are astonishing and unforgettable. Incendiary Girls is the work of a craftswoman and a visionary and simply one of the best storytellers I've encountered in a long time.”—Laura Kasischke, author ofThe Raising and The Life Before Her Eyes“These are stories about the body, dismembered by science or war, but also about the disembodied, the spirit, the self, that mysterious sum (or, as in many of the stories here, absence) that is greater than our parts. Scheer’s brand of magical realism—a cool grotesquerie—is the perfect vehicle for this mix of the morbid and the ineffable, raw emotion and other-worldly yearning. This is a beautiful, beguiling...and slyly unsettling collection.”—Peter Ho Davies, author ofThe Welsh Girl“A fresh take on the vagaries of the human body and the human spirit. Scheer spins inventive tales, laced with a dose of magic.”—Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD; author of What Doctors Feel; editor-in-chief,Bellevue Literary Review“Taken together, these 11 stories encourage you to marvel at human resilience in both its physical and spiritual forms. You’ll likely marvel at Scheer’s imagination as well.” —LA Review of Books