STORYTIME
a writer's CV 

CRAZY LOVE
Stories by Leslie What

with an introduction by Kate Wilhelm

"An ace at the new weirdness defined by the anthology Feeling Very Strange  (2006), What uses it to be creepy, polemical, and funny, all at once or in various blendings. These 17 stories progress from grim to laugh-out-loud  ludicrous without ever derogating their common subject, love, though they do depict it as fairly insane. The opening stories, 'Finger Talk' and 'Babies,' feature women in abusive relationships they don't want to change; that one is trapped in a gorilla suit and the other is, unbeknownst to hubby, carrying sextuplets leavens their dire  circumstances some, but enough? 'The Cost of Doing Business' is about a  professional victim, whose clients must be able to afford her subsequent hospitalizations and quite adequate comfort between jobs. Things lighten up through the predicaments of a man who masturbated for  science when 18 and at 49 discovers he has thousands of offspring, a man who realizes that work doesn't proliferate during vacation without cause, a nauseating senior who expects familial love although he intends to live forever, and others, until at last there is the hermit researcher's tale, from which we learn, through a vale of our own tears of laughter, why there are always hermits. Love is why, of course.  Crazy!"  

Ray Olson ~Booklist Starred Review