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Willful Creatures
Stories
by Aimee Bender


6.6

based on 14 reviews
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based on 3 votes
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The "This American Life" contributor and acclaimed author of "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt" returns with a second story collection.

Doubleday, 224 pages
08/16/2005
$22.95

ISBN: 0385501137

Fiction
Short Stories

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Entertainment Weekly Jessica Shaw

What a treat to spend 15 stories in Bender's vast and wonderfully unhinged imagination.

Publishers Weekly

Bender's surrealism is never gratuitous in the fantastical yet truthful stories of this singular collection. [6 Jun 2005, p.34]

The New York Times Joy Press

Her twinkling, chatty prose style carries the reader effortlessly over the road bumps of implausibility.

Wall Street Journal John Freeman

A most unlikely page-turner.

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.

PopMatters Anne K. Yoder

There's lightness without whimsy, it's make-believe but the truths are real to the core.

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]

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]

San Francisco Chronicle Buzz Poole

This collection moves along effortlessly, though you will linger in the "what" it reveals.

Kirkus Reviews

A handful of real moments, presented with bite and wit. [15 May 2005, p.554]

Library Journal Faye A. Chadwel

This collection again demonstrates Bender's edgy and brilliant storytelling gifts. [1 Aug 2005, p.74]

Boston Globe Gail Caldwell

Cleverness abounds in ''Willful Creatures," and cleverness, with no other end in sight, is a pretty short street.

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.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

Lightly freckled with Gogol and goth, many an entry becomes subsumed by its own premise.

The average user rating for this book is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Julie F gave it a2:
A huge disappointment.

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Willful Creatures Stories by Aimee Bender

Willful Creatures
Stories
by Aimee Bender