JANET MITCHELL's debut collection consists of 15 stories, remarkable in their variety, about families and childhood, small towns and prophets, boys and girls, life and death. At turns funny, heartfelt, and wise, THE CREEPY GIRL displays an exuberant, playful talent for continually surprising language, and a dark sensibility equally adept at registering humor and pain. The book is the most recent winner of the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, which has earned a reputation as one of the best predictors of new talent in contemporary fiction.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Creepy really does describe these short stories, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The title story begins as the creepy girl's father brings home a pair of cement lawn ornament statues of Chinese kids. The nameless daughter, a preadolescent, yearns for her single father's attention and soon goes to some very bizarre lengths to secure it. In The Unimpressive Story, Mitchell offers up a Flowers in the Attic–style brother-sister love story; as the narrator recounts memories of her now-dead brother, she weaves truth and sexual fantasy into the narrative of her turbulent childhood. The Carpentry Story reads like a free verse poem, as the narration flows together without beginning, middle or end. Discomfiting themes of absence, mental illness, incest and not-right familial relationships permeate the collection. It's rare for a compilation to get under your skin the way this one does. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Creepy" really does describe these short stories, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The title story begins as the creepy girl's father brings home a pair of cement lawn ornament statues of Chinese kids. The nameless daughter, a preadolescent, yearns for her single father's attention and soon goes to some very bizarre lengths to secure it. In "The Unimpressive Story," Mitchell offers up a Flowers in the Attic style brother-sister love story; as the narrator recounts memories of her now-dead brother, she weaves truth and sexual fantasy into the narrative of her turbulent childhood. "The Carpentry Story" reads like a free verse poem, as the narration flows together without beginning, middle or end. Discomfiting themes of absence, mental illness, incest and not-right familial relationships permeate the collection. It's rare for a compilation to get under your skin the way this one does. --Publisher's Weekly, 8/24/09
Eerie, transgressive tales you won't soon forget. --More.com
Janet Mitchell writes sudden, severe, disturbing stories that capture the reader in a kind of literary choke hold, and The Creepy Girl, her debut collection, is a work of outragaous, much-needed literary ambition. Mitchell is hell-bent of extracting every last drop of sadness and pain from her sentences. --Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women
These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer. --Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer. --Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
Elegant prose characterizes every piece in the collection. ... If the plot of "The Carpentry Story" resists chronology, most of the others, some which do possess a beginning, middle, and end, downplay the importance of such a structure. Most often, the storyteller is the story. Death is not emphasized as much as reactions to it. Yet these are hardly sterile experiments in prose poetry. ... In "The Down Home American Story," a woman kills--rather graphically. In "The Father Story," the title character comes back to life. And in "The Unimpressive Story," a sister's sexual fantasies keep her brother alive in memory. But to reduce these stories to what happens in them is to swallow good wine without regard for taste. This collection will get you drunk, to be sure, but I recommend sipping. The book is sexy and playful, particularly in darker moments. Mitchell's dialogue crackles, so much so that I grew excited by the sight of quotation marks. ... These stories, though short, are not small. ... All fifteen of them work as parts of a whole, echoing each other without circling the same ground. --bookslut.com, October 2009
These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer. --Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
Eerie, transgressive tales you won't soon forget. --More.com
Janet Mitchell writes sudden, severe, disturbing stories that capture the reader in a kind of literary choke hold, and The Creepy Girl, her debut collection, is a work of outragaous, much-needed literary ambition. Mitchell is hell-bent of extracting every last drop of sadness and pain from her sentences. --Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women
These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer. --Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer. --Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
Elegant prose characterizes every piece in the collection. ... If the plot of "The Carpentry Story" resists chronology, most of the others, some which do possess a beginning, middle, and end, downplay the importance of such a structure. Most often, the storyteller is the story. Death is not emphasized as much as reactions to it. Yet these are hardly sterile experiments in prose poetry. ... In "The Down Home American Story," a woman kills--rather graphically. In "The Father Story," the title character comes back to life. And in "The Unimpressive Story," a sister's sexual fantasies keep her brother alive in memory. But to reduce these stories to what happens in them is to swallow good wine without regard for taste. This collection will get you drunk, to be sure, but I recommend sipping. The book is sexy and playful, particularly in darker moments. Mitchell's dialogue crackles, so much so that I grew excited by the sight of quotation marks. ... These stories, though short, are not small. ... All fifteen of them work as parts of a whole, echoing each other without circling the same ground. --bookslut.com, October 2009
These stories are a lot like dreams: wonderfully strange and disquieting, very funny when you least expect it, and chock-full of complexities to mine. They are also beautifully rendered, highly entertaining, and original. The Creepy Girl and other stories is an exciting debut collection, and Janet Mitchell is a laudable writer. --Binnie Kirschenbaum, author of An Almost Perfect Moment
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Entertaining!,
By
This review is from: Creepy Girl and Other Stories (Paperback)
Creepy Girl and Other Stories makes you think you know what to expect when you first begin it, but each story is unique with some quirky and some....well...creepy, in a very good way. A book you cannot put down!
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare gift for language,
By David Miles "Voracious" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creepy Girl and Other Stories (Paperback)
THE CREEPY GIRL AND OTHER STORIES is as good a debut collection as you are likely to find. Janet Mitchell possesses a rare gift for language--lyrical, imaginative, beautiful, funny, truthful. And her voice is wholly original. Quite honestly, I never read anything quite like her writing. THE CARPENTRY STORY and THE UNDERNEATH BRIDGES STORY fulfill Kerouac's dictum that prose should be poetry: These are as beautifully written as great poetry. Elsewhere, THE ELEPHANT STORY is whimsical, wonderful, heartbreaking--at its center, a love story between a circus pachyderm and his monkey clown. A playful premise that will leave you in tears by the end. THE MOMMA STORY is most unusual--the narrator discusses how she plans to have her taxidermist boyfriend stuff and display her mother after she dies. But my description makes it sound odd, perverse, "creepy"--in fact, the story itself is a gorgeous and passionate love letter from daughter to mother, albiet an unusual one. THE DOWN HOME AMERICAN STORY is a hilarious and chilling, even shocking, piece of irony--but irony in its historical literary sense, a la Swift. I could go on, but in summation, every story in this collection is a gem, and as a whole it is a little masterpiece of astonishing originality. If you read only one book a year by a new author you are unfamiliar with, this book should be this year's choice.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read,
This review is from: Creepy Girl and Other Stories (Paperback)
Creepy girl and Other Stories was a great read! This book really pulls you in and is hard to put down!
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