“The stories in Tales of Falling and Flying are mesmerizing and magical, and Loory has a boundless imagination. He’s also a deeply compassionate author — the world he’s envisioned with this book is one that rewards kindness and inclusivity. It’s a stunning book that’s perfect for oddballs, outcasts or, really, anyone who wants to escape to another, better world, if only for a few hours.”
—Michael Schaub, npr.org
“Short stories so imaginative — and yet so perplexingly familiar — they could have formed in a dream. . . . Taut, meticulously balanced and written in Loory’s direct, witty prose, his own stories take a page from Aesop: high-flying tales nonetheless boiled down to the essentials.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“If you loved Ben Loory’s first short story collection, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, you’ll love his second even more. Tales of Falling and Flying takes readers to wonderfully whimsical worlds where anything is possible.”
—Hello Giggles
“Exquisitely crafted fables. . . . A perfect follow-up to his starred debut. . . . Sometimes there’s anthropomorphism in stories that recall David Sedaris’ Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. . . . He hits just the right beat at the right moment. . . . Delightfully disarming stories for readers seeking a plunge down the rabbit hole.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Life and death are treated with equal gravity and levity in this nimble, refreshing collection of shorts from Loory. Each of these stories is a deceptively small bite, its depth of flavor often growing and lingering. . . . The book engages both the profound and the frivolous. Reality flirts with and sometimes gives way to the bizarre, the economy and style of language making a man with disappearing body parts (‘Missing’) and a sloth seeking work in the city (‘The Sloth’) equally vivid.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Ben Loory’s stories are little gifts, strange and moving and wonderfully human. I devoured this book in one sitting.”
—Ransom Riggs, author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
“Russell Edson’s new protégé, or Steven Millhauser, distilled into tea. Meet, or re-meet, Ben Loory, whose preposterous, friendly stories can’t help but charm. They are so bizarrely readable they don’t even feel like they’re made of words.”
—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
“Ben Loory is a wonder. I’d like to curl up inside his marvelous head and canoodle with a besotted squid, swallow a tiny dragon, levitate with Death, and fall in love with the Eiffel Tower, and after reading these sublime stories—slyly funny, melancholy, and deeply weird—I suppose I have, and it was fantastic.”
—Elissa Schappell, author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls
“Who the hell is this guy? What happened to make this brain? These are the questions you’ll ask after Ben Loory’s Tales of Falling and Flying. Loory is the psychedelic Aesop of our modern age, the king of talking birds and frogs, characters named war and peace, the Apuleius of the internet generation. His words are full of swords and wings. Get ready. They’ll cut you. They’ll make you fly.”
—Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book
“To read a Ben Loory story is to slip through a portal into an adjacent dimension. To learn—with brevity and clarity—the laws of this universe next door, new rules of logic and contradiction and truth. And, in the end, to be left with the disturbing and wondrous feeling of having never left home at all.”
—Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
“These tiny off-kilter fairy tales, equal parts Beckett and Twilight Zone, will amply suit surrealistic seniors and twisted teens alike. Perfect for reading on strange beaches and by oddly-shaped swimming pools. Fits right in your pocket or purse for emergency doses of the charming and weird.”
—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
“Parables, dark fables, quirky flash fictions—call them what you will, Ben Loory has perfected the form and in Tales of Falling and Flying proves once again he can disturb a little and entertain a lot. Easily read, not easily forgotten.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of The Southern Reach Trilogy
“Ben Loory’s stories are like perfect kōans cracked from inside the world’s smartest fortune cookie; funny, crunchy, and irresistible.”
—Mark Haskell Smith, author of Naked at Lunch
“One of my favorite writers, Ben Loory is almost impossible to describe. Like Bruno Schulz, if Schulz had been born to a left-handed Little League coach in Short Hills, New Jersey? Like Lydia Davis, if she’d been hatched from an egg? Like listening to a conversation between Bette Davis and Miles Davis outside the house where Amy Winehouse died? Like listening to Mick and Keef not talk about Altamont? Probably there is a war going on somewhere, but these cool, dazzling little tales will never let on.”
—Peter Straub, author of A Dark Matter
“This darn book is like receiving a sword in the mail or finding a maze in the kitchen or a squid who fell in love with the sun or a dragon in the backyard; it’s confusing at first and then the next thing happens.”
—Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies and Return to Oakpine
