The "This American Life" contributor and acclaimed author of "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt" returns with a second story collection.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Entertainment Weekly Jessica Shaw
What a treat to spend 15 stories in Bender's vast and wonderfully unhinged imagination.
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Bender's surrealism is never gratuitous in the fantastical yet truthful stories of this singular collection. [6 Jun 2005, p.34]
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Favorable
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The New York Times Joy Press
Her twinkling, chatty prose style carries the reader effortlessly over the road bumps of implausibility.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal John Freeman
A most unlikely page-turner.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Carolyn See
Insofar as short narratives can be new, exciting, harsh, rugged and unyielding, these are. Every sentence in them is a fresh surprise.
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Favorable
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PopMatters Anne K. Yoder
There's lightness without whimsy, it's make-believe but the truths are real to the core.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Alan Cheuse
She moves language the way painters move paint, working squarely in the Steinian tradition, and making this linguistic action part of the effect, if not the meaning of the stories. [28 Aug 2005]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Diana Wagman
She is Ernest Hemingway, using one perfect word where most writers would use 12. Even better, she is Hemingway on an acid trip; her choices are twisted, both ethereal and surprisingly weighty. [14 Aug 2005]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Buzz Poole
This collection moves along effortlessly, though you will linger in the "what" it reveals.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
A handful of real moments, presented with bite and wit. [15 May 2005, p.554]
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Favorable
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Library Journal Faye A. Chadwel
This collection again demonstrates Bender's edgy and brilliant storytelling gifts. [1 Aug 2005, p.74]
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
Cleverness abounds in ''Willful Creatures," and cleverness, with no other end in sight, is a pretty short street.
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Mixed
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LA Weekly Claire Messud
Sometimes it feels as though she is striving for effect, as though Bender’s delightful and quixotic mind has alighted upon a flickering idea, or an image, and insisted, rather too forcefully, upon its story-ness.
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Mixed
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Village Voice Jessica Winter
Lightly freckled with Gogol and goth, many an entry becomes subsumed by its own premise.
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