Title: A dream of countries where no one dare live
First published: 1993
Description: These ten highly inventive stories demonstrate Louis Phillips's virtuoso handling of both traditional and unconventional ways of making fiction. His stories are lean, without wasted effort or awkward moves. Infused with a kind of seismic energy, all of the stories in this debut collection twist, turn, curve, backtrack upon themselves, doing what they can to entertain and torment. In "Snakes," while Billy the Kid roams the New Mexico countryside, a side show of circus.

Freaks engages in a bloodbath, an orgiastic slaughtering of hundreds of rattlesnakes; a writer down on his luck plays a desperate psychological game with his agent in "The House Wherein I Dwell"; in the title story, a man on his way to Florida to rescue his parents ends up in a river searching for a wooden leg; and in "Merite des Femmes," during a shared taxi ride from the airport into the city at two A.M., a woman spins a quirky tale about a man's bizarre choice of.

Bookbinding material. Full of verbal wit and energy, these stories showcase Louis Phillips's narrative fecundity and his dazzling range of voices, styles, and themes.
LC classification: PS3566.H485 D74 1993