noria

Marvelous Living Human Curiosity & Peerless Prodigy of Physical Phenomena - Strange But True - Alive! - Why???About my book:"Some books of short stories are more than mere collections: they are their own worlds. Noria Jablonski’s Human Oddities is a strange, beautiful, terrible, slantwise world, full of the human tenderness that is brought on by both love and violence. These are beautifully written stories by an author who understands that the odd is no more unlikely or unlovable than the 'normal,' and that those among us who are statistically improbable deserve light, language, and a certain loving ruthlessness."—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Giant's House and Niagara Falls All Over Again"Noria Jablonski pulls off a high-wire balancing act that left this reader swooning. The inevitable comparisons to Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love are deserved, not because of Jablonski’s sideshow-worthy characters, but because of her remarkable ability to juggle hilarity, death, gimlet-eyed optimism, and the unchecked giddiness of being alive."—Heidi Julavits, author of The Mineral Palace, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Uses of Enchantment"Jablonski's debut story collection is filled with insistent bodies, carved open, sewn up, cut apart, made monstrous, made beautiful or disguised as someone or something else altogether... She subsumes the innately spectacular nature of her stories under an elliptical lyricism that brings her characters' emotional lives delicately, respectfully, to the fore. Even at their most self-hating moments, they possess a wry sense of irony, an amazing resilience and, occasionally, a heartbreaking joy... An exciting debut that rises to the risks it takes."—Kirkus Reviews"Jablonski's revelations are quiet, delicate things, like the child in the corner who raises his hand to suggest that under the bruises, scars, and stitches, we are all very much the same."—San Diego Union-Tribune"The theme here is the body in all its gucky glory: mutable, manipulated, and manipulating... More than merely quirky or unconventional, these fascinating characters live in worlds made rich by Jablonski's fluid prose and startling imagery... These people—who seem as if they could be from other planets, and yet who describe us at our least controlled and most elemental—come circling around, and bless us."—Amy Shearn, author of the forthcoming novel How Far Is the Ocean From Here, for Rain Taxi Review of BooksPowell's Amazon Booksense I will occasionally be blogging here: