Review by Booklist Review
A posthumous collection explores the strange, ethereal worlds of author Dunn, who wrote the 1989 cult classic Geek Love. These 18 previously unpublished works revolve around bodies and the way we use them. In the titular story, a high-powered businesswoman realizes that her sex robots cannot fulfill her deepest desire: to be known. When she hears about a companionship console, she immediately orders the new model called the Brain. She eventually falls in love with the console and reckons with the physical limitations of their relationship. In Near Flesh, robots, aliens, and other foreign bodies frequently loom over humans who are struggling with their own livelihoods. Dunn gives a master class in shortform prose. For example, in a succinct two pages, she manages to capture the chaos and grief of losing a child during an explosion. Dunn, who died in 2016, was known to embrace the grotesque and twisted in her fiction. This collection--her second book to be published posthumously (after Toad, 2022)--is no different. Perfect for readers who enjoy dark short stories with a dash of sf.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This delightfully offbeat collection from Geek Love author Dunn (1945--2016) mixes tales of surprising encounters with those of unsettling dislocations. It begins with a series of flash fictions including "The Flautist," an evocative two-pager about a woman charmed by her flute-playing taxi driver on the way home from a classical concert. Darker tones imbue the longer stories. Thelma, the protagonist of the title entry, plans to celebrate her 42nd birthday by having sex with one of the four life-size robots she keeps in her closet. Angry and anxious over an upcoming business trip, she chooses a robot named the Wimp, built to withstand abuse ("she had saved the Wimp's purchase price several times over in repair bills"). Gilly, the protagonist of "The Well," is similarly wound tight, plagued by fear in the isolated new home she shares with her husband in Northern California, especially when he's away at work. Towered over by sequoias, Gilly feels like she's living at "the bottom of a well." Though some readers will grow weary of the recurring themes of anxiety and displacement, Dunn vividly captures her protagonists' attempts to cope with the turbulence of their lives. There are plenty of treasures on offer, even if the whole is less than the sum of its parts. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Witty and disturbing, this posthumous collection of previously unpublished short stories showcases the skillful writing of novelist and journalist Dunn (Geek Love), who died in 2016. The stories are occasionally linked by recurring characters but are largely unrelated; the strongest threads tying the collection together are the transgressive themes Dunn explores, like violence, death, and the struggle of human connection. The opening story sets the morbid tone: "Pieces" concerns individuals who believe they must be buried alongside their amputated body parts to reach heaven. Dunn's writing is often visceral, never shying away from the physical realities of life and death. For instance, the intense "The Education of Mrs. R." relates the physical and emotional tolls on a woman slaughtering her flock of roosters now that her husband has grown tired of them. Some stories take on a more playful tone, such as "The Flautist," in which a taxi driver purposefully finds his fares among concertgoers, for whom he plays his flute on their rides home. VERDICT A strong collection of transgressive fiction. The gruesome nature of some of the stories may deter readers, but Dunn's popularity, devoted following, and deft writing lend easily to a general recommendation for purchase.--Jennifer Renken
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An outsider author's posthumous career continues with her first story collection. As Dunn's 1989 novel,Geek Love, continues to charm fans old and new, her star has continued to ascend since her death in 2016; this collection follows a well-received posthumous novel,Toad (2022). It contains stories that were published during her lifetime in theNew Yorker,Redbook, and elsewhere, as well as many not seen until now. For those familiar with her work, one of the main pleasures of the book is noticing her preoccupations and following the connections; plots revolving around amputated limbs and people falling from buildings will come as no surprise. This horror-adjacent work and the somewhat-deranged everywoman character at the center of stories like "The Education of Mrs. R," "The Novitiate," and "A Revelation of Mrs. Andes" connect Dunn to her contemporary Rachel Ingalls (Mrs. Caliban). "The Resident Poet" seems an outtake from or a warm-up forToad, with the same protagonist, Sally, and a setting inspired by Dunn's two years at Reed College. A self-conscious character like Sally is also central to "Near Flesh," a dark satire about a corporate manager who has four sex robots: Wimp, Lips, Bluto, and the Brain, the last of whom she's afraid of because it knows her too well. Fat and unhappy is also the plight of the teen character in "The Allies": miserable on Earth, she may be moving on to life with extraterrestrials. "Rhonda Discovers Art" originally ran in theParis Review as an excerpt from the novel that was to follow,Geek Love, but never came out, though Dunn worked on it for many years. Rhonda, who committed a murder in her youth, becomes obsessed with a performance artist who enacts near-death experiences on stage. She's also the protagonist of "Screaming Angel," which is set at a boxing match, another of Dunn's major preoccupations. These sharp-edged, disturbing, often black-humored and unabashedly nasty stories will fascinate Dunn fans. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
