Keret applies magical realism to the angst that claws at the insides of his characters. But this collection features some of the darkest imagery Keret has brought to print to date

Etgar Keret finds the humor in situations surreal and heartbreaking, from fatherhood to bro-ish metafictional fables

A dazzling collection by one of the best short story writers of our times combines the absurdity of a Coen brothers film plot with the surrealism of Franz Kafka’s writing

Often these figures are wonderfully average, slightly clueless men whose troubles have left them directionless and, perhaps counterintuitively, emotionally open. It’s precisely that openness, that low-level hum of receptivity that predisposes them to a kind of quotidian sweetness and light that leaves you with a soft sigh, and maybe even a tear

The book shows a master of the short story pushing against the limits of what the form can achieve

Keret risks sentimentality recklessly and often. When it works, the payoff is powerful: a palpable urgency of emotion. There’s a lot of love in this book. One hopes it’s contagious

The writing here reveals that some of the strangeness Keret works into his fiction comes from the unique way he sees the real world: a little bent, exasperated, amused and yet also with deep wells of kindness

If you read only one book of short stories this year, it should be this one

For Keret, the creative impulse resides not in a conscious devotion to the classic armature of fiction (character, plot, theme, etc.) but in an allegiance to the anarchic instigations of the subconscious. His best stories display a kind of irrepressible dream logic

The stories are all thought-experiments. What if, they ask. Why not? And, what the heck? Like all art, they are highly patterned, highly charged, refracted reflections on the chaos and randomness of everyday existence

Like fables and parables, most of these stories are not tied to a specific time or place. Keret’s satire may be local, but his ironies are global; this is a master storyteller, creating deep, tragic, funny, painful tales with scarcely more words than you’ve read in this review