Staff Pick
Haunting and funny stories full of isolation, lost explorers, weird neighbors, cephalopods, anarchists, clones, hazy memories, and apocalypses — it's just one dinosaur away from having everything I've ever wanted in a book. Recommended By Kirk J., Powells.com
Leyna Krow's debut collection of interlocking stories is a many-sided gambit that flares and glimmers with a prismatic light all its own. Beguiling and uncommonly immersive, I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking is infused with desertion, abandonment, seclusion, and absence — the disquieting distances that slowly tear us apart. A wild, winsome objet d'art worth marveling over again and again. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In I m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking the strange and the mundane collide. These are stories of strange experiences set in familiar places, and of familiar experiences set in strange places. Many of the pieces in I m Fine take place close to home, in suburban neighborhoods, or rural communities. The settings are conventional, yet something unexpected, or even magical, is occurring. In one piece, a couple speculates about random objects that appear without reason in their backyard. In another, neighbors try to figure out if a local meth dealer is keeping a live tiger captive on his property. In other pieces, it s the setting that s fantastical, but the characters reactions that remain ordinary, like in the titular story where a journalist lost at sea and hunted by a mythical ocean creature admits to struggling with loneliness and isolation in much the same way he does even when he s safe at home.
Although they are not directly linked by any specific character, the pieces in this collection are bound through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. There are unexpected appearances and disappearances, movement of inanimate objects, the search for something lost, the finding of something unusual. There are prophesies, dreams, unidentifiable creatures, and environmental catastrophes on a scale both large and small. There are action figures and octopuses, sullen teenagers and missing cats. At their core, these stories are imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy. They each stand on their own, but mean considerably more when read together.
"
Synopsis
In I'm Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking, the strange collides with the mundane: close to home and far from it, in suburban neighborhoods and rural communities, with cycling apocalypses and backyard tigers. Each story stands alone, but they are connected through reoccurring imagery and a shared theme of protagonists in emotional peril. At its core, this collection is imbued with mystery, oddity, humor, and empathy, but what it really wants to show us is that we're never really alone-- most especially when we're certain that we are.