A book of surreal short stories that would vie with Hurakami for the strangest stories I’ve ever read. Unlike Hurakami, however, there is no Kafkaesque feeling of alienation; the odd people in these stories seem generally content with the craziness of their lives. What kind of stories are these? Here’s a list from the back cover: “The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial noses. A dead man posts letters home to his estranged wife. Two women named Louise begin a series of consecutive love affairs with a string of cellists….”

Sometimes, when I read odd stories like these, I get the feeling the author is just trying to be weird in order to be weird. I didn’t feel that way while reading this book. Reading the stories felt like the author was relating them exactly as he’d seen them in a vision or a dream.

I’d have to say that even though I read all the way to the end I’m not sure how much I took away from the book. I didn’t remember any of the details of the book until I looked over the story titles.