Crackpot Palace

by Jeffrey Ford

Eclectic is certainly an adjective that can be used to describe the work of the phenomenal Jeffrey Ford—along with imaginative, provocative, mesmerizing, and brilliant. His powerful dark fantasy, The Physiognomy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; his novel, The Girl in the Glass, won the Edgar® Award, mystery and crime fiction’s most prestigious prize. Crackpot Palace is Ford’s fourth superb collection of short fiction, and in it, his prodigious talent shines as brightly as ever. Here are twenty tales both strange and wonderful, filled with mad scientists, vampires, lost souls, and Native American secrets, from an author who has been glowingly compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr (The Alienist).

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Collections, Weird Fiction, Science Fiction

338 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 2012

About the author

Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the Fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including Fantasy, Science Fiction and Mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.

He lives in southern New Jersey and teaches writing and literature at Brookdale Community College in Monmouth County. He has also taught at the summer Clarion Workshop for science fiction and fantasy writers in Michigan. He has contributed stories, essays and interviews to various magazines and e-magazines including MSS, Puerto Del Sol, Northwest Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Argosy, Event Horizon, Infinity Plus, Black Gate and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

He published his first story, "The Casket", in Gardner's literary magazine MSS in 1981 and his first full-length novel, Vanitas, in 1988.

Reviews

[Randee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I seldom read short stories unless they are written by Stephen King or someone I like as much. And, if I read short stories I like them to be oddball, weird, fantasy, sci fi, horror or a combination of such. Something akin to O'Henry (who knew how to write a short story!) Almost a year ago, I read Jeffrey Ford for the first time. A friend highly recommended 'The Shadow Year' and I enjoyed it in the way I enjoy King and Blake Crouch. I saw a review of this somewhere and figured I would give it a try. Of course, Mr. Ford is a good writer, but I like the way his mind works. There are some truly original ideas contained in this collection. I've purchased some of his other novels and hope to read another one of his stories early in the new year at the latest. If you haven't read anything by him, look over his body of work and pick something....you'll be glad you did.

[Karl]

Contents:
001 - Introduction
004 - “Polka dots and Moonbeams”
022 - “Down Atsion Road”
040 - “Sit the Dead”
065 - “The Seventh Expression of the Robot General”
076 - “86 Deathdick Road”
095 - “After Moreau”
102 - “The Hag’s Peak Affair”
120 - “The Coral Heart”
140 - “The Double of My Double Is Not My Double”
181 - “Daltharee”
173 - “Ganesha”
187 - “Every Richie There Is”
193 - “The Dream of Reason”
209 - “The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper”
219 - “Relic”
247 - “Glass Eels”
261 - “The Wish Head”
306 - “Weiroot”
312 - “Dr. Lash Remembers”
323 - “Daddy Long Legs of the Evening”

Cover by Derek Ford

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeff Ford does not need praise from the likes of me. But I'm bothered that Crackpot Palace hasn't gotten more and better reviews here on Amazon.

Jeff has taught American Lit - the old stuff. And that's here in the writing: Irving, Hawthorne, Melville a solid splash of Poe are present as he shows us the Wonder and Hell of exurban New Jersey in "Down Atsion Road," "The Double of My Double is not My Double," and "86 Deathdick Road."

But he's not just a spec fiction Updike or Cheever. The range is wide: He's got a city in a bottle with "Daltharee," follows H.G. Wells in "After Moreau." Ganesha talks in the story of that name. Ford's evocation of the simultaneous mundanity and surrealism in mid-20th Century Catholicism is superb (trust me on this) in "The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper."

There are twenty stories in here and I don't think there's a dud. My favorite?

Well, I did a reading with Jeff one night in New York and insisted on going first because it's not wise to try and follow him. What he came up with was "Polka Dots and Moonbeams"

It's a 1940 black and white early noir film the kind with a leading man who played bad guys in A pictures and a leading lady who's better remembered for her divorces than her movies. Except that in the way of Ford a door opens into a wilder, darker place where 1940 movies, sadly, never went.

But now you can. Go buy the book.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Ford makes me envious. His prose is proof positive that it does not take flowery language to make literature. The words Ford uses are by and large ordinary ones—apart from individual coinages that betray a sharp ear for what names should sound like. The sentences Ford writes are usually simple, his vernacular often common (he uses "busted" frequently to mean "broken" or "burst," for example). It seems as if almost anyone ought to be able to write the way he does. But the skewed stories that he constructs—even when they are actual stories with beginnings, middles and ends, as opposed to tone poems or corkscrew descents into weirdness—are always at least a few compass points away from the mundane. That simple subtlety makes me want to imitate it.

Here's an example; this is the first paragraph of "Dr. Lash Remembers," from late in Crackpot Palace:

I was working fifteen-hour days, traversing the city on house calls, looking in on my patients who'd contracted a particularly virulent new disease. Fevers, sweats, vomiting, liquid excrement. Along with these symptoms, the telltale signature—a slow trickle of what looked like green ink issuing from the left inner ear. It blotted pillows with strange, haphazard designs in which I momentarily saw a spider, a submarine, a pistol, a face staring back. I was helpless against this scourge. The best I could do was to see to the comfort of my charges and give instructions to their loved ones to keep them well hydrated. To a few who suffered most egregiously, I administered a shot of Margold, which wrapped them in an inchoate stupor. Perhaps it wasn't sound medicine, but it was something to do. Done more for my well-being than theirs.

Can't you just hear the slow, deliberate voice of the old doctor relating the start of this tale? There's only one proper noun in this introduction, but already we know this isn't our city...

Crackpot Palace contains a round score of stories in an impressive range of genres, from the blatantly science-fictional tones of "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" (which reminded me strongly of the classic "Gonna Roll Them Bones" by Fritz Leiber) and "The Seventh Expression of the Robot General" with its echoes of Barrington J. Bayley to the Americana-tinged folk tales of "Down Atsion Road" and "The Wish Head." Some of the pieces are short, but a couple of the strongest are also the longest: "Relic," for example, with its collection of sermons for the sand-encrusted Church of Saint Ifritia, stands out in my mind even now. A lot of them are told in the first person, and seem almost autobiographical; Ford and his wife Lynn feature as characters confronted by dreams and wild tales that could almost be true. And short afterwords to almost every story add background details, courteous acknowledgements of Ford's various colleagues and influences, and significant observations about the craft of writing.

Jeffrey Ford is someone who has the admiration of no less a fellow surrealist than Jonathan Carroll, who says "Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen." High praise—but justified.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide variety of story types, legends, folklore, ghost stories, sci/fi and just plain bizarre(I'm still trying to figure out wth happened in 86 Deathdick Road. These are primarily reprints from other collections, with the exception of The Wish Head(which was one of my favorites), so if you've read Ford before these may not be new. But this was my first foray into Ford and it seemed like a pretty good introduction to his style.

The standouts for me:
The Wish Head
Sit the Dead
The Hag's Peak Affair
After Moreau
The Coral Heart

Another good book for those of you who don't like single theme collections.

[Ty Kaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! What a little gem of a collection. Best read of 2017 BY FAR. Picked this up expecting surrealism A La Cameron Pierce, but I was totally blown away. There are some weaker stories in the group (Sit The Dead and Ganesha come to mind) either because they felt forced or lacking in some elementary or structural substance that I can't quite place my finger on. But, even the stories I would consider lacking are still delivered with a control of language unrivaled today except for Michael Chabon. The stories that are strong are incredibly strong. Wonderful language, wonderful imagination, wonderful characters. Perfect mixture of light and dark, humor and tragedy, beauty and decay, and realism and surrealism. 5 stars across the board, easily. Can't wait to re-read this book and get my hands on some more of Ford's other work. He seems like just a genuinely nice dude.

[Sarah]

I'm a huge fan of Jeffrey Ford's writing, and I've been looking forward to this collection for a while. It was solid, but there was no story that wowed me the way the Empire of Ice Cream or any of a dozen other stories and several novels have in the past. The worlds were richly imagined, but there was a narrative sameness. I enjoyed the notes after each story. Very good, just not my favorite of his.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story that put Ford on my list was almost certainly "The Coral Heart", which would slot well in any sword and sorcery collection, and the stories surrounding that are both eclectic in topics but share an off-kilter viewpoint and experimental nature. Many feel like fragments of larger works, or sections of modern art where the artist carved away everything but the best stuff.

The reader is left admiring this piece-of-a-thing and imagining the rest, of what possible apocalypse drives "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" or how the surreal suburban nightmare of "86 Deathdick Road" turned out or even the context of "The Double of My Double is Not My Double". They turn into thought experiments or mood pieces and the theme of "collapsing systems" appears to repeat.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeffrey Ford comes through yet again, with a big heaping table full of beautiful, weird, fantastic stories that range from dark to light, from humorous to dead serious, and everything in between. One moment he reads like a postmodern John Collier, the next he's a Bradbury-infused Kafka. You won't get better fusion stories than these. Eat up.

[Gregor Xane · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've not yet read anything by Jeffrey Ford, I envy you. This is yet another excellent(!) collection.

[Darin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best short stories offer a glimpse of a world through characters believably compelled by the circumstances of the story to behave in the way they do. Things happen, but they tend to happen for a reason and the reactions of the characters go a long way towards determining whether the story is a keeper or filler. Crackpot Palace is full of keepers, light on the filler.

Hopping across genre boundaries like a traveler with a passport marked all access, Jeffrey Ford offers incredibly imaginative tales of suspense, fantasy, science fiction and noir. Many are set in his (and my) native New Jersey, subverting the typical legends of the Jersey Pine Barrens. Ghost stories and vampiric tales are given unique twists; eccentric characters blur the line between reality and imagination. In the best tales, whole worlds are created in the space of a few pages, dispensing their magic like pixie dust.

My personal favorites include the lead story, "Polka Dots and Moonbeams", a sci-fi tinged noir or a noir tinged science fiction tale, either way the romantic interaction between the tough guy and his dame throw the reader for a loop when the reality of this universe sets in. "Daltharee" is a so off-kilter it's almost demented take on a bottled city, it includes the perverse yet precise line, "I found a few cities sprouting beneath my fingernails last week." Oh yes, Ford's prose doth sing. The altogether real menace present in the straight noir "Glass Eels" propels the reader along the dirt roads through the marshes along the Delaware Bay in search of illicit goods.

If you're looking for a set of tales that defy all expectations, offer thrilling mixes of scares, conjecture and outright fantasy, this is your book.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ford has the keys to the landscape of our dreams. Taking the ephemera of our pop culture such as comic books and strips, pulp science fiction, the drudgery of day to day living, our dreams, our myths, and turning them into a startling dreamscape filled unsettling evocative images, characters, wonder, and terror, a rich and occasionally quite horrific world. Each of his short fiction collections is a wunderkammer, a cabinet filled with curiosities, grotesques, and eerie beauty but presented with an earthy sense of humor. His novellas like Relic and the Wish Head are the most consuming and realized but shorter pieces like Dr. Lash Remembers and Daddy Longlegs of the Evening manage to create whole universes, and really the only story that felt a little half-baked was Ganesha.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this collection. I find that more and more i'm moving away from novels and towards short story collections.

This collection is part surreal fantasy, part embellished memoir, and part random.

I can only pick out a couple of stories that i absolutely liked and I think those were the "weirder" ones like: "Relic","Daltharee" and "The Wish Head". Some others fell absolutely flat. However the completed collection I feel seems to be more than the sum of its parts. The stories are subtly connected by theme, motifs, or characters. Doppelgangers abound and so do severed feet, and in the words of Ford himself "secret passageways abound" between his stories. The most interesting part however is the reuse of Ford himself and his wife Lynn as characters. It makes reader feel like we get an almost intimate glimpse into the workings of their long marriage. Maybe that's true, maybe its not, but it kept reading all the way to the end.

Other than that, as other reviewers have commented, Ford's language is not complex or verbose, but that does not diminish the effect of his stories, in fact it may enhance them.

If your looking for something a little different, read this collection.

[Caleb Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection--Ford's best stories are an amazing combination of wistful, funny, gorgeous and melancholy. He has many styles, including the grouchy alter-ego narration of "86 Deathdick Road" and "Down Atsion Road", but my favorite is his "straight" fantasy, which I put in quotes because it's unlike any other I've read. "The Coral Heart", "Relic", "The Dream of Reason", "Dr. Lash Remembers", "Daddy Longlegs of the Evening"--Ford has hit upon a sweet spot here, the perfect combination of brilliant yet dreamlike imagery, plot, and subtext.

(The author notes after each story are nice too, not because they're necessary but because I always like to hear an author chat about writing. One I loved, in which Ford mentions briefly how some reviews of his novel "The Physiognomy" called him "anti-science", which he isn't--and what would they prefer, that he portray the debunked pseudo-science of physiognomy in a positive light?)

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This series of short stories that have (mostly) appeared elsewhere all have some element of odd twist (think "Twilight Zone" or Bradbury's Illustrated Man). The problem for me was that they felt forced, as though the author was given a task - say, a vampire tale (as in "Sit the Dead") - and wrote to fit that task rather than writing a story that just happened to have some twist. By twist, I mean something a little off: a sermon with heavier overtones, a trip to a magic show that goes awry, etc.. After a while, it was difficult to care about how the story would end or be changed from the norm for that genre; the author's notes at the end of each selection were very interesting, illuminating his thought process (see, his defense of "Dr. Lash Remembers" as being steampunk).

ARC provided by publisher.

[Bibliophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeffrey Ford, how I adore you. You have never let me down, you never disappoint. Sometimes I wonder where the hell you're going with a story, but wise from experience I lean back and enjoy the ride, and it always ends up somewhere unexpected and wonderful. You are unpredictable, but not whimsical. I trust you completely. This is more than I can say for most of your collegues, who lure me in with false pretences and then leave me dissatisfied. Not you. You always follow through. You sweep me up and guide me through your sad and terrifying and hilarious universe and then return me safely home, giddy and glowing (though the mummified saint's foot made me a little nauseous). Please don't ever leave me.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't read all the shorter stories in this collection, but the two longest, Relic (a surreal, elaborate take on stories within stories) and the Wish Head (a vaguely surreal take on a mystery set in the 1930s) were brilliant. The other shorter were intensely surreal and writing in the gorgeous, languorous prose that Jeffrey Ford does so well. This is the second collection I've read from him and, unusually for me, not the last, and I'm still looking forward to working through more of his work though I suspect he's a writer who still hasn't produced one central, defining book that completely stands out.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding collection of weird fiction. The twenty stories include horror, magical realism, fantasy, and even a steampunk one. Some are outright fantasy from start to finish; others are so subtle that it’s like they are our normal world, but someone has pulled it just ever so slightly out of kilter. My favorite was “Down Atsion Road”, in which an aging artist is pursued by a Native American demon. The scariest? “Daddy Longlegs of the Evening”, which will give anyone with arachnophobia the creeps. Note: the creature is not just a spider. It’s far, far worse than that.

[Rob Boley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brilliant collection will dig its way into your imagination and linger there well after you put it down. It features the best vampire story I've read in a long time, a wonderful spin on the concept of miniature cities (Kandor!), and an inventive exploration of the doppelganger concept. Few authors have Ford's talent for taking old concepts and making them fun and new. But probably the best thing about this collection is that each story is its own world, yet somehow they fit together like a bizarre mosiac: mad, wonderful, charming, and hilarious.

[Bill Wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

About half way through this book I realized I had tried to read it when it first came out. I decided to go ahead and give it another chance, but I have to say it just didn't really appeal to me. I found myself being more intrigued by the explanations at the end of each story than by the tale itself.

[Bill Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ford writes weird fiction with bits of mystery and horror thrown in for good measure. Pretty much every story in this anthology deserves reading. I look forward to more by this author.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty middle of the road for me. A few of the stories I very much disliked, two were fantastic, and one I wish could have been the whole book.

[Michi · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories remind me of Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman due to the oddities that exist in the narrative, but darker and creepier. Even his diction and sentence structures are horrifying and specific. As much as I enjoyed how weird it was, I needed to watch sitcoms to take me out of the nightmare that is his crackpot palace.

Some of the stories aren’t too great for me but some are brilliant. Jeffrey reminds me of a Will Wood who writes eclectic horror fiction, from content to voice. Someone responded to the last story in this book: “is he allowed to do that?” and that echoes my sentiment.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved some of the stories and felt less enthusiastic about others. When there was a crafted storyline with a beginning, middle and end, they were great. Some of them descended into chaos though and felt like, "I once had a weird dream so I'll share it with you" and were about as interesting as other people's dreams tend to be--which is not very. He's a gorgeous writer and I liked his style. I just lost a bit of patience with shaggy dog tales

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Jeffrey Ford's Shadow Year and absolutely loved it. And since I love short stories, I thought this would also be an easy pick for me. And in many ways it was. I really liked about half of the stories where things were a little creepy, a little off, a little unexpected. But the other half of the book were just a little too fantastical for my tastes. Some of the endings were a little too open ended for me. Perhaps I'm just getting more conservative in my "old" age. But overall I did enjoy the book, just not quite as much as I enjoyed his other book.

[Kathryn Grace Loves Horror · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm really beginning to think I can't go wrong with Ford. This is my third book (second collection of his) and I have yet to encounter any story that I don't absolutely love.

This collection includes:

"Polka Dots and Moonbeams" which starts the collection off with a literal bang. This noir-ish tale concerns a couple doomed to repeat the same night over and over but determined to have a wild time doing it.

"Down Atsion Road" concerns Pine Barrens legends other than the Jersey Devil and revolves around the narrator's series of encounters with a mysterious artist. One of Ford's spookiest.

"Sit the Dead" is an amusing stories of involving vampiric creatures and old world traditions. This one is a lot of fun.

"The Seventh Expression of the Robot General" - A sci-fi tale that wouldn't normally be my cup of tea, but in Ford's hands, I loved it.

"86 Deathdick Road" is one of the more surreal tales in the collection, and I honestly can't rightly explain it. There's not a point to it, so much as it's a journey you go on with the narrator as he spends a bizarre night out visiting the antagonistic "Smartest Man in the World."

"After Moreau" is what it sounds like, a brief account told by one of Moreau's creations of what the island was really like and what happened after Moreau's death.

"The Hag's Peak Affair" concerns mutated monsters and government conspiracies. It sounds strange, but Ford makes it beautiful.

"The Coral Heart" is the closest to a straight up fantasy you're going to get in this collection. Its companion story is featured in Ford's A Natural History of Hell.

The amusing "The Double of My Double is Not My Double" features Ford as the protagonist of his own story when he's forced to take on not only his doppelgänger, but his doppelgänger's doppelgänger as well.

"Daltharee" is a mad science story featuring miniature cities ("bottled cities") that in turn have their own miniature cities and involves the ethics of creating and then messing with other worlds.

"Ganesha" features the titular god, a teenage girl, and a demon.

"Every Richie There Is" was my least favorite story in the collection. It was well written and interesting but broke my heart.

"The Dream of Reason" involves a possibly mad, but brilliant, scientist and the consequences of his epic experiment. This is a melancholy tale, strange, but captivating.

"The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper" is not quite an actual story, but a kind of dream-like (it even involves dreams), surreal musing. Ford pulls off something here that not many writers could.

"Relic" is the bizarre tale of a church that springs up around a gruesome holy relic, the foot of the supposed Saint Ifitia.

"Glass Eels" was originally written for New Jersey Noir. It's Ford's take on a more traditional crime story. Fun fact: glass eels are a real thing. I had never heard of them before this story.

"The Wish Head" is the longest story in the collection and revolves around a mysterious dead body, the corpse's painted doppelgänger, and a location where wishes made can come true.

"Weiroot" might work best if you've read Ford's story "The Boatman's Holiday" already, as Weiroot is a character from that. If not, this is still an offbeat but entertaining short (5 pages) tale.

"Dr. Lash Remembers" is a steampunk story about the downfall of humanity when people can no longer separate memory and imagination.

"Daddy Longlegs of the Evening" is the most legitimately disturbing story in the collection. It involves a spider/child and his plans for world domination, and it honestly gave me the creeps.

This is a fantastic collection, one that my review can't really do justice. Ford is a truly magical writer, and I can't wait to eat up more of his work.

[Ty-real · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Ford first came to my attention via the first story in this book. Along with Joyce Carol Oate's Fossil Figures, Polka Dots and Moonbeams was a real standout in Sarrantonio and Gaiman's anthology Stories. An unexpected slice of period piece, Polka Dots and Moonbeams mixes a swift cocktail of love, addiction and existential uncertainty within a backdrop that feels fresh. It's menacing, ambiguous yet strangely beautiful at times too.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this story appears to be very much in one of the two major veins which Ford writes. In this, he creates a fantasy setting borrowing from periods that aren't necessarily - most commonly doing his own very specific flavour of Dickensian steampunk. Like his earlier trilogy The Well-Built City, they are often concerned with ideas of uncanny science as can be seen in stories like Daltharee and The Dream of Reason. Both of these stories concern that of a mad scientist, and their strange and rather sinister approach to science they contain an eerily convincing quality. The Dream of Reason particularly is another stand-out from the collection.

Also in the darkly-Dickensian setting are Doctor Lash Remembers and Daddy Longlegs of the Evening. Both are excellent examples of Ford's ability to tread between the uncanny and outright horror - the latter notable for retaining its atmosphere whilst indulging in an enjoyably pulpy tone.

When taking on more conventional genres, Ford's stories are no less unique. Sit the Dead is an excellent vampire romance, and Coral Heart is a very strange take on heroic fantasy. The longest story in the collection is Wish Head, a murder mystery about a beautiful young woman's body that is washed up in a local river. It's melancholic and sinister, and surprisingly one of the fastest reads in the whole book despite being the longest. It's preoccupation with strange symbols is echoed somewhat by Relic, a story about lies and faith.

When he's not writing quasi-period pieces, Ford tends towards a high unique blend of the fantastical and the autobiographical. Down Atsion Road, The Double of My Double Is Not My Double and The War Between and Heaven and Hell Wallpaper are all examples of this. Another real standout from the collection is also in this: Every Richie There Is is almost not fiction at all, by the author's own admission, but it's a haunting snapshot of a life glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. 86 Deathdick Road, meanwhile, is disturbing in a way I've rarely encountered outside of the works of Richard Shearman.

It's not all darkness and melancholia: short stories like The Seventh Expression of the Robot General and After Moreau are playful and funny.

The final standout in the collection is Ganesha, a story about a young woman and a Hindi deity. The story of faith and self-actualisation exudes pathos, and expresses the core concepts in a highly creative and interesting manner.

Crackpot Palace is an excellent collection, full of great ideas and unique atmosphere. Not every single story lands, but most do. Worth a read, especially if you're a fan of the works of writers like Kelly Link and Michael Swanwick.

Originally posted on my blog: http://ty-real.blogspot.co.uk/

[Daniel Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

More personalized metafiction than in any other of his collections, which means this one is filled with pretty-far-out-there tales. "Down Atsion Road" is a chiller. His story on doppelgangers is awesome, and you'll love all of the stories set in his old stomping grounds in the pine barrens. What really makes this a fine read is its literary diversity. Ford writes in an abundance of different genres, which is why I use his collection The Drowned Life as a teaching text in one of my creative writing classes. By the time my students have finished the book, they understand that anything is possible, and they begin to branch out in their own work.

[Paul Lunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeffrey Ford's "Crackpot Palace" is an odd collection of short stories that range from the enlightening to the downright bizarre. The stories themselves have all appeared in other works & after most of them there is an epilogue describing the origin of the story. As someone not all that familiar with Ford's works, I'm honestly not that impressed by a lot of this although this collection is still more or less an interesting read. It's jut not a book I'd recommend for anyone not familiar with his works.

[Selene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, even though I normally dislike short stories because there is never enough information to get your teeth into. Not so with Ford! He has the talent of drawing you in and giving you just enough insight to keep your attention. I particularly liked the notes at the end that inform the reader about who the story was written for. Has definitely made me want to read more of his stories!