Blood Lake and Other Stories — Jim Krusoe

Jim Krusoeââ,¬â"¢s beset and bemused narrators are awash in a solution of Donald Barthelmeââ,¬â"¢s worthy absurdities and Kafkaââ,¬â"¢s mutating humor. In these surreal, dystopian tales, characters find their way into and out of Platoââ,¬â"¢s cave, mental hospitals, interspecies love affairs, plane crashes and Gypsy kidnappings. These narratives, which shapeshift and interpenetrate, contain everything form the rhapsodies of a night nurse, to a lyrical meditation on the egg, to lists of wryly named sexual positions. Krusoeââ,¬â"¢s universe is full of amazing chaos and deadpan astonishment.

When you enter Jim Krusoeââ,¬â"¢s wittily indeterminate world, your first instinct is to grope around for a literary coordinate. At first he reminds you of Kafka: the dreamlike inconsequentiality and gentle-sinister comedy -- the half-human animals and evanescent temptresses. But the America that Krusoe inhabits is spelt with a C, not a K. He is robustly situated in his time and place, and he has a lilt that is all his own. In the end, he stopped reminding me of anyone. Jim Krusoe is an original. -- Martin Amis