Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Willful Creatures by Amee Bender is a collection of fictional short stories that offer a look at different kinds of authentic love. The stories are whimsical and slightly melancholy with an optimistic finish. Relying on odd characters and lyrical prose, the stories offer a surreal prospective into human emotion.
I fell in love with Amee Bender’s style when I read The Girl in The Flammable Skirt several years ago. Willful Creatures follows the same whimsical and eccentric style. Although her characters are out of the ordinary (i.e. a boy born with a iron head, seven potato babies, and a tiny man purchased a pet) she offers us such a clear view into their hearts you can sympathize with their exceedingly human feelings of love and despair.
“No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness.” Hymm, page 207
If you have a love for the strange and an interest in symbolic expression, you will like, and maybe even love, Willful Creatures.
Well I guess I’ll just have to check it out! Oh and Happy Birthday! Love you!