Customer Reviews

The Best of Not One of Us

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"The Best of Not One of Us" edited by John BensonWe all feel a little "apart" from society once in a while.

But there's a big difference in feeling separated on

occasion and actually being a little off center or

completely off the charts most of the time.

"The Best of Not One of Us" pushes opens the door to the

minds of some of those `out there' folks who give us a

glimpse into lives we can not imagine ourselves living, but

even so feel vaguely and uncomfortably too familiar.

Main characters include angels, aliens, ghosts, tulpas (oh

stop complaining and just go look it up), dimension

travelers and some people contemplating things we'd never

admit to thinking about ourselves.

All the stories are great; but here is homage to my

favorites.

Can some wounds be so deep you can't escape them even in

death? When faced with a child in pain that you can't reach

much less rescue, do you stay and ignore their plight -- or

run away? Patricia Russo wrestles with these choices in "The

Elevator"; one of the stronger stories in this anthology.

Marc Lecard's "Night Window" sheds a completely new light on

the oldest profession, or more precisely, shows how it can

be re-evaluated in today's service orientated job market.

In "Chad" Kate Riedel brings a commune of inept tree huggers

closer to nature than they intended.

"Pale Fruit" by Jeffrey Thomas reminds us, like some pill

for an erectile disfunction commercial, don't have a thought

if you can't sustain it.

Steve Vernon`s "Hooney Jew, Hooney Jew" leaves an uneasy gut

feeling that the worst is yet to come. Who do you turn to

when you're defenseless and your hero folds his tent in the

night?

Other writers are Sonja Taaffe, Gary A. Braunbeck, Ceri

Jordan, Wayne Allen Sallee, Anke Kriske, Seth Matthew

Lindberg, Katherine Harbour, Kurt Newton, Mark McLaughlin

and Rachel Baumer.

The stories were hand selected by "Not one Of Us" magazine

editor John Benson and cover a twenty year harvest of 15

prime writers' best works. He did a good job in picking the

best of the crop as the stories satisfy anyone's need to

feed the alien hiding within us all. Buy it! It will make

you feel better about your own neurosis.

###

A friend just recently introduced me to "Not One of Us" so I had never read any of the stories in this book. I love the idea of something that call to the part of almost everyone that wants to see themselves as just slightly outside the rest of the human race. I think, on some level, we all want to believe that we are different from everyone else-if not in a good way, at least in some way. These stories call out to that part. As with any anthology the quality is a little uneven. I'm not afraid to admit that I didn't always understand what the author was trying to say. The three best, in the order in which they are listed in the book are:

The Elevator - the great, true to life characterizations I've seen in other stories by this author.

Fading - heartbreaking.

Last Poetry Night at the Saturnalia Coffee House - just weird and wonderful.

With an honorable mention to Chad.

I hope others who haven't yet had a lot of exposure to this type of literature will take a chance with this book. It's a great introduction to the genre. And people out there who have, but know someone who hasn't, well that's what friends are for.