In a spine-tingling new collection, the "unique"(NPR) and "wickedly funny" (New York Times) Helen Phillips offers an idiosyncratic series of "what-ifs" about our fragile human condition.
Some Possible Solutions offers an idiosyncratic series of "What ifs": What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you?
Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world. In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers-and with Phillips' characteristic smarts and imagination, we see that no one is quite who they appear.
By turns surreal, witty, and perplexing, these marvelous stories are ultimately a reflection of our own reality and of the big questions that we all face. Who are we? Where do we fit? Phillips is a true original and a treasure.
"Some stories make you feel you're in the planned world of a conscientious architect, and others are more like wandering through someone else's dream. That Phillips can take us into her dreams without losing us in the fog is to her huge credit....Parenthood is a subject especially suited to Phillips strange and profound gifts."
The New York Times Book Review
"Phillips plays out for us what might happen if the impossible were possible. . .She is a master at building slightly askew worlds that resemble our own but allow for the inexplicable, the astonishing, the surreal. She drops you in these worlds with just enough of a flotation device to keep you bobbing above water, but avoids excessive explanation and exposition."
Los Angeles Times (interview)
"Phillips's gift is for making the peculiar seem like it's happening down the street...Just when you think you're on to Phillips's game, here comes another little fable, postmodernist puzzle, or sly revelation."
