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Title details for The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer - Available

The Third Bear

by Jeff VanderMeer
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Compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka, contemporary fantasist Jeff VanderMeer continues to amaze with this surreal, innovative, and absurdist gathering of award-winning short fiction. Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.
In “The Situation," a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town," a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata" follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening," in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.
Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 15, 2010

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781616960179

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781616960179
      • File size: 2927 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 21, 2010
      VanderMeer's seventh collection (after Secret Lives) is a fine introduction to one of our very best contemporary practitioners of the fantastic. In the dark "The Third Bear," an isolated medieval town is beset by a monster that uses the bodies of its victims to create a grisly work of art. "Finding Sonoria" concerns a down-on-his-luck PI hired to find a country that issued a postage stamp but apparently does not exist. The intensely surreal "The Situation" takes place in a company torn by bizarre office politics and dedicated to body modification and the construction of beetles and flying manta rays. "The Goat Variations" is a sophisticated alternate history in which a newly elected U.S. president is briefed on a startling scientific breakthrough with origins not of this world. Fans of slipstream and the interstitial will relish VanderMeer's superb prose, overwhelmingly odd situations, and fascinating, eccentric characters.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from August 1, 2010

      In the title story, a monster of seemingly supernatural powers threatens a small village, forcing its leader to find the only way to save his home, while in "Fixing Hanover," a seaside salvage reconstructionist balks at repairing a mechanical device he fears will bring about his own doom. These 15 elegantly crafted stories ably demonstrate VanderMeer's skill at telling tales of wonder in language that enhances the reading experience. VERDICT Fans of imaginative literature and true speculative fiction should appreciate this groundbreaking collection by a World Fantasy Award winner that calls to mind the works of Borges, Kafka, and Stanislaw Lem.

      Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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