STORYTIME

Bibliography of
Leslie What's
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CRAZY LOVE
by Leslie What

introduction by Kate Wilhelm

"These stories are the wonder of an artist mischievous, getting away with what she can to stave of the boring musties. To be admired is the sheer loft of imagination, the deft line sharp as a razor, the insight that slays. Funny, yes, but the kind of funny that sweeps around and tags you from behind. You are laughing and then you are not laughing and then you are reminding yourself to breathe. So these stories, by so irreverent a conjuror, are to be admired for their electricity, their challenge, their seeming helplessness at being other than they are, their absolute high-wire performance."

~ Robert Olmstead fiction judge Ken Kesey Award for Fiction

Finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award    

"...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