Prime Books

A companion of sorts to Prime Books' ongoing anthology series Jabberwocky, Bandersnatch takes its name from the same famous Lewis Carroll poem. And like Carroll's curious creature, the stories in Bandersnatch defy description. Fantasy, horror, science fiction, literary surrealism, they're all present, sometimes in the same story. For someone like myself who doesn't care for labels, especially when used to erect impenetrable walls around genres, this is a good thing. Bandersnatch defies genre as marketing tool, and in turn defies what the reader can expect from its stories.

One thing the reader can expect, though, is a surprising plethora of talking animals and inanimate objects: from punch bowls and old soda cans to polar bears, cats, iguanas and dogs. (Oh, so many dogs! There are enough of our canine friends prominently featured in these pages that the anthology could just as easily be called Wag of the Tale .) In this way, Bandersnatch becomes more a collection of fables than anything else, albeit without the accompanying morals we've come to expect since Aesop. Unfortunately, the result is that Bandersnatch won't be for everyone. As is often the case with fables, many of the stories don't concern themselves with plot resolution or character arc so much as with situation. That can frustrate a lot of readers, your humble reviewer included.

So perhaps it's no surprise, then, that the stories that really stood out for me are the more fully formed ones. In a crackling and urgent literary style, Aimee Potwatka's "You Are Not My Husband" tells the story of a woman whose cold, distant husband is one day replaced by a doppelganger far more attentive to her needs, yet she finds herself just as unhappy. Nick Mamatas's "Summon Bind Banish" tells two stories, one of Aleister Crowley and one of a contemporary Crowley devotee living in suburban Connecticut, and masterfully ties them together with a moment of resonant pathos. In the economically worded and wonderfully chilling "Roadkill", Seth Cully introduces us to an otherworldly creature disguised as a woman on a commuter train. Laura Cooney's "Pink" forgoes the fantastic for the grotesque with the tale of a teenage girl who daydreams about being a dangerous badass (Cooney's protagonist would likely want to skin me alive for saying this, but there's something so charming about her, so adorable even, that the reader can't help but root for her). One of the most imaginative stories in the bunch, Karen Hueler's "Down on the Farm" centers around human-dog hybrids bred for service, and one customer's secret plan for the hybrid girl he buys.

But my highest praise is saved for the anthology's strongest story: Jack M. Haringa's "A Perfect and Unmappable Grace." A beautiful dark fantasy, "Grace" takes us into the life of Dr. Eddie Stone, a post-war ?migr? from Switzerland who runs a funeral home in New Jersey, listens to jazz, fanatically studies Einstein, and makes money on the side by stitching up gangsters' gunshot wounds in the middle of the night. Stone is also a spiritual man, not above explaining his search for proof of God to the gangsters who knock on his door. Then a dangerous piece of theological evidence falls out of the sky. Haringa, better known in horror circles as a literary critic, comes charging out of the gate with this, one of his first published stories. It's also one of the best short works of speculative fiction from 2007. Here's hoping the Bram Stoker and World Fantasy awards take note, and that we see more fiction from Haringa in the future.

Bandersnatch is a pocket-sized hardcover, only 6 1/2 " by 4 3/4 ", and with gorgeous wrap-around art by Danny Malboeuf and no title (or any text at all) on the outside, not even the spine, it most resembles a blank journal one might find in Barnes & Noble or a stationary store. But don't let appearances fool you. There's a mountain of imagination to be found in this molehill of a book.