Customer Reviews

Creepy Girl and Other Stories

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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!

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.

Creepy girl and Other Stories was a great read! This book really pulls you in and is hard to put down!

The Creepy Girl is easily one of the most innovative and astonishingly accomplished collections of short fiction I've seen in a decade. Beautifully written. Unnerving, magical and sexy, in all the good ways. Great debut, all stars.

The most exciting literature I have read in a long time. A fascinating web spun with characters, words and images. Mitchell's work is haunting, disturbing and beautiful.

Stories ask many questions of readers as they entertain them. "The Creepy Girl and Other Stories" is a variety of short stories from Janet Mitchell, her first collection of short stories. The topics are all of what really matters to a small town girl, as the tone ranges from light to fable-like. "The Creepy Girl and Other Stories" is a fine collection and a choice pick for those seeking work from new writers.

Wow what great stories. Janet Mitchell does a fantastic job keeping a mixture of subtly frightening and dangerously beautiful imagery afloat in her work. She sets us up for something expected and then doesn't take the easy way out, swinging back around and reminding you that there's still more to mine from this blood and bones landscape. All legs and arms and fingers and toes, and sex like airplanes falling from the sky. Grace Paley's "Faith" stories on steroids - where Paley is more languorous Mitchell comes out fighting with a strong staccato voice and a challenging playfulness with language - very refreshing.