False Bingo: Stories

False Bingo: StoriesCombines the otherworldliness of Jeff VanderMeer's "Annihilation," the menacing irony of Shirley Jackson and the cold feminist fury of Margaret Atwood The New York Times Book Review Named a Fall Read by The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune The mundane becomes sinister in a disquieting story collection from the author of The Grip of It In Jac Jemc's dislocating second story collection, False Bingo, we watch as sinister forces some supernatural,

Combines the otherworldliness of Jeff VanderMeer's "Annihilation," the menacing irony of Shirley Jackson and the cold feminist fury of Margaret Atwood --The New York Times Book Review

Named a Fall Read by The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune

The mundane becomes sinister in a disquieting story collection from the author of The Grip of It

In Jac Jemc's dislocating second story collection, False Bingo, we watch as sinister forces--some supernatural, some of this earth, some real and some not--work their ways into the mundanity of everyday life.

In "Strange Loop," an outcast attempting to escape an unnamed mistake spends his days taxiderming animals, while in "Delivery," a family watches as their dementia-addled, basement-dwelling father succumbs to an online shopping addiction. "Don't Let's" finds a woman, recently freed from an abusive relationship, living in an isolated vacation home in the South that might be haunted by breath-stealing ghosts.

Fueled by paranoia and visceral suspense, and crafted with masterful restraint, these seventeen stories explore what happens when our fears cross over into the real, if only for a fleeting moment. Identities are stolen, alternate universes are revealed, and innocence is lost as the consequences of minor, seemingly harmless decisions erupt to sabotage a false sense of stability. "This is not a morality tale about the goodness of one character triumphing over the bad of another," the sadistic narrator of "Pastoral" announces. Rather, False Bingo is a collection of realist fables exploring how conflicting moralities can coexist: the good, the bad, the indecipherable.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: MCD X Fsg Originals
Published: 10/08/2019
ISBN: 9780374538354
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.00w x 0.90d

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2019
Publishers Weekly 08/19/2019
Booklist 09/01/2019 pg. 46
Shelf Awareness 10/11/2019