Interesting Monsters

By Aldo Alvarez and Cleo Qian

Playful, wry and tinged with melancholy - 16 short stories chronicle the ups and downs of Mark's and Dean's relationship. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555973566
• ISBN13: 9781555973568
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 0.6" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

The best collection of stories in recent memory

I find a lot of collections of short stories have that aroma of M.F.A. program to them: they're samey, predictable, tame, bloodless, by-the-book, trendy, with maybe a few features that distinguish them from each other and from the Big Name Author books they're parroting. Aldo Alvarez's collection constantly surprises, engages both my emotions and my mind, and succesfully breaks the rules; hopefully, it will also set a trend for books in their own genre, with few or no equals. I feel like I've discovered a new favorite author; I've just read INTERESTING MONSTERS a second time, and I can't seem to get enough. I strongly recommend it to my friends.

Wonderful Monsters

In his first short story collection, Aldo Alvarez bounces us from sublime, stripped-down emotion ("Heat Rises" and "Fixing a Shadow") to hilarious, over-the-top surrealism ("Rog & Venus Become an Item" and "Death by Bricolage"). But through it all, we are reminded that we, all of us, search for the same thing: to love and to be loved. I look forward to Alvarez's second collection.

Much much more than meets the eye

Now and then books pop up that cause a stir in the naive reader - a stir that proves once again that good literature is as alive as an evolving medium as any of the arts. Visual arts are perhaps easier to categorize into schools or trends and such labelling often promotes more transient interest in works of questionable value than providing the mind expanding function of the new, the changed, the unique.Literature is not so easily codified. While the evidence of our current increased reading habits becomes more evident, the usual best-seller hype too often submerges unique new voices. Such is the case with Aldo Alvarez. Though acknowledged in circles of informed writers and critics and readers of literary magazines, Alvarez seems to explode on the scene with INTERESTING MONSTERS like a breath of fresh literary air. Alvarez himself takes care to inform us of his position in the ReModernism school (and I'll let you read his precis about that without diluting the wit and bite!). This is not a book of short stories: this is a theme and variations on the myth and reality and ultimate viability of interpersonal relationships. Yes, the relationship explored is between two gay men, and in electing to fast forward, flash back, daudle, and pause for amusing roulades, Alvarez creates an atmosphere for self examination that is universal. The "interesting monsters" of the title appear to be the schisms in each of our personalities that surface and retreat at times with disatrous/amusing results. This little book is packed with humor, with tenderness, with sheer professorial excursions into the English language. Some readers may find it not well tied or a bit obtuse, but those "faults" are easily healed with subsequent reaings - once you understand the enormously invigorating new style passing before your eyes and seeping into your brain. A fine book by a fine writer - and observor!

a flash of brilliance

Aldo Alvarez has always been a brilliant writer, now it's time for the rest of the world to know it. Please don't allow categories to disuade you from picking this book up; the stories here speak to humanity, the heart, relationships and the mind. Alvarez has that most elusive of writers' talents, the ability to make you hear his characters speak, and they speak frankly. This is literature, pure and simple, and if the written word is important to you, this book should be as well.

Gentle and wise book about special relationships

This is very special book in that treats relationships with the softness and awareness that borders on brilliance. I loved most of it, it gave me a feeling of well being and of being in tune.The author is coming to Berkeley and I am looking forward to his reading. Well done.