Sunday 24 April 2016

The Underdog Stories by Luke Kondor

A collection of strange, wonderful, sad, romantic, and weird tales about what happens when the underdog bites back.

The latest book from the ‘master of wit and satire’ — a collection of surreal, subversive, and satirical tales.

What happens when a community of tiny people move into a man’s beard?
Why are portals appearing in Neville's tea?
Will Rhuben’s marriage survive after he's turned into a dog?
Who’s that singing in the shadows? 

Goodreads description 

I reviewed Luke Kondor's The Missing Body Parts of Mr Doherty last year here : http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-missing-body-parts-of-mr-doherty-by.html

The Underdog Stories is a collection of Luke's short stories and it has the same gently surreal feel about them that I saw in his other book. The magic realist writer he most reminds me of is Murakami, who also treads that path between surrealism and magic realism. Like Murakami there is something rather melancholic about the predicaments that Kondor's characters find themselves.

The stories are:

The People Who Live In My Beard - pretty self-explanatory but look out for the last line of that one.
His Dirty Little Portal - a man discovers a portal to a parallel world in a mug of tea. 
Doghouse - Dad moves into the doghouse literally
@boyonawall - a clever piece about social media
The Singer in the Shadows - a weird nightmare of an encounter
Rent - a story about a young woman takes on a flat she can't afford and the impact it has
Dog Gone Bad - Rhuben always knew he was really a dog, but he doesn't through the operation's implications on his marriage
A Mother's Letter - just that only from a rather freaky mum
The Underdog - "You're not the victim, you're the fucking underdog"

A short short-story collection but a fun one.


 

2 comments:

Robin Gregory said...

This looks like a wonderful collection. Reminds me a little of Kelly Link's world. Fabulous!

Unknown said...

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