Rent Tabloid Dreams

Synopsis

DIVB"ITabloid Dreams/I is an unrepeatable feat, a tour de force." —IThe Washington Post Book World/I/BBRBRIn his second collection, ITabloid Dreams/I, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler dazzles with his mastery of the short story and his empathy for odd and ostracized denizens of humanity. Using tabloid-headlines as inspiration—"Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis", "Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac", "JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction"—Butler moves from the fantastic to the realistic, exploring enduring cultural issues of exile, loss, and aspiration.BRBRThe collection begins and ends with stories set on the ITitanic/I—the first takes place while the ship sinks, the last is narrated by a survivor stuck in the Bermuda Triangle. Along the way, we meet a woman who can see through her glass eye when it’s removed from its socket, a widow who sets herself on fire after losing a baking competition, a nine-year-old hit man with a roster of murders, and a woman who meets an extraterrestrial in a Walmart parking lot and travels to outer-space on their first date. In ITabloid Dreams/I, Butler weaves a seamless tapestry of high and low culture, of the surreal, sordid, and humorously sad./DIV

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