Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt ***

This collection of stories falls squarely into the category of experimental fiction. A typical Aimee Bender story starts with a clearly stated surrealistic premise, which the characters deal with in a fairly realistic manner. Here are a few opening paragraphs:

One week after his father died, my father woke up with a hole in his stomach. It wasn't a small hole, some kind of mild break in the skin, it was a hole the size of a soccer ball and it went all the way through. You could now see behind him like he was an enlarged peephole. ("Marzipan")

Steven returned from the war without lips. ("What You Left in the Ditch")

There were two mutant girls in the town: one had a hand made of fire and the other had a hand made of ice. ("The Healer")

The narrators are young women coming to terms with their sexuality or their familial responsibilities, which gives their stories an emotional depth that balances their formal inventiveness. My favorite stories were "The Healer" and "What You Left in the Ditch."

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt collects Bender's early stories. I'd be interested in reading her more recent work to see how it has developed.