What do you think?
Rate this book
Bad Houses
A boisterous collection of surreal, darkly humourous short stories that will delight fans of George Saunders and Kelly Link
From John Elizabeth Stintzi, the mind that created the daringly bizarre novel My Volcano, comes an electrifying collection of strange and dark tales.
In the surreal, often precarious realities of Bad Houses, a doctor discovers a double-edged cure for the Ebola virus, a college student loses a different body part each time they return home for the summer, Midas's hairdresser strives to keep his secrets, and a young girl develops a fascination with the trolls who harvest her father's pumpkin patch. At once humourous and horrifying, these stories will inevitably take residence in your mind.
Present throughout Bad Houses is a deep and abiding sense of humanity sprinkled with a dash of alienation, guilt, and instability. Filtered through a fabulist lens, these stories contemplate the struggles of modern existence. Each character lives their own haunted life, trying to navigate the path from bad houses to good homes.
From John Elizabeth Stintzi, the mind that created the daringly bizarre novel My Volcano, comes an electrifying collection of strange and dark tales.
In the surreal, often precarious realities of Bad Houses, a doctor discovers a double-edged cure for the Ebola virus, a college student loses a different body part each time they return home for the summer, Midas's hairdresser strives to keep his secrets, and a young girl develops a fascination with the trolls who harvest her father's pumpkin patch. At once humourous and horrifying, these stories will inevitably take residence in your mind.
Present throughout Bad Houses is a deep and abiding sense of humanity sprinkled with a dash of alienation, guilt, and instability. Filtered through a fabulist lens, these stories contemplate the struggles of modern existence. Each character lives their own haunted life, trying to navigate the path from bad houses to good homes.
Audible Audio
Published January 14, 2025
21 people are currently reading
254 people want to read
About the author
John Elizabeth Stintzi
17 books142 followersJohn Elizabeth Stintzi is an award-winning trans writer and visual artist who was born and raised on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario, and is currently writing and living in the United States.
They are the winner of the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, the 2019 Long Poem Prize from The Malahat Review, and the inaugural Sator New Works Award from Two Dollar Radio. Their work has been published in places like Ploughshares,Black Warrior Review, PRISM International, Kenyon Review Online, and Best Canadian Poetry.
Their debut novel Vanishing Monuments (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020) was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and their debut poetry collection Junebat (House of Anansi, 2020) was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award. Their newest novel, My Volcano (Two Dollar Radio (US) and Arsenal Pulp Press (CA/UK) 2022, Tlon (ITALY) 2023, and Cielo Santo (SPAIN) 2024) and was longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library's 2022 Book Prize for Fiction, and named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, The Independent Review, and others.
Their latest book, a collection of short stories called Bad Houses, came out from Arsenal Pulp Press in 2024. They are currently at work illustrating their first graphic novel: Automaton Deactivation Bureau.
They are the winner of the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, the 2019 Long Poem Prize from The Malahat Review, and the inaugural Sator New Works Award from Two Dollar Radio. Their work has been published in places like Ploughshares,Black Warrior Review, PRISM International, Kenyon Review Online, and Best Canadian Poetry.
Their debut novel Vanishing Monuments (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020) was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and their debut poetry collection Junebat (House of Anansi, 2020) was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award. Their newest novel, My Volcano (Two Dollar Radio (US) and Arsenal Pulp Press (CA/UK) 2022, Tlon (ITALY) 2023, and Cielo Santo (SPAIN) 2024) and was longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library's 2022 Book Prize for Fiction, and named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, The Independent Review, and others.
Their latest book, a collection of short stories called Bad Houses, came out from Arsenal Pulp Press in 2024. They are currently at work illustrating their first graphic novel: Automaton Deactivation Bureau.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
April 22, 2025
Like Stintzi's earlier novel My Volcano, there are some excellent ideas here, developed in clever and open-ended ways. But for various reasons, I was less happy with the treatments. For example, I loved the idea behind "Moving Parts", but at the end was not sure what the author was trying to say. (The narrator is complete only when they return to their hometown? I can't say I can think of a friend who would share that sentiment.)
My favorite story is "Foundations", the longest in the collection. It's chock full of interesting ideas and uncanny events; there's for example . The narrator Lea is an artist, slogging through exhausting adjunct teaching gigs, sharing details of her life with her lover:
I'm not sure the ending worked that well for me, but overall this was great fun.
My favorite story is "Foundations", the longest in the collection. It's chock full of interesting ideas and uncanny events; there's for example . The narrator Lea is an artist, slogging through exhausting adjunct teaching gigs, sharing details of her life with her lover:
A few times, Cress even drew a tarot card from a deck on her bedside table and placed it between Lea's breasts before she fucked her.
I'm not sure the ending worked that well for me, but overall this was great fun.
September 20, 2024
My Volcano was among the best queer novels of 2022. This short story collection is definitely one of the best I've read not only this year, but in my not-so-recent memory. It's recognizably Stintzi, and anyone who's read My Volcano will know exactly what I mean: never willful, always gleefully cartwheeling surrealism, here colored darkly. There is something to be noted about queer joyfulness in these stories, which isn't mere happiness (happiness is a cishet ruse anyways, cf. The Promise of Happiness), but a much more complex thing intertwined with Side Affects, as Malatino would put it.
March 28, 2025
Stintzi continues to be a master of the sad and weird vibes! Loved how these stories were clearly thematically linked without stepping on each others' toes--they always found new paths to go down. Highlights for me included "Moving Parts" (the best story in the collection and exactly my kind of strange narrative), "Pathetic Fallacy," and "Engagement."
July 13, 2025
2.5/5
So many of these short stories end abruptly and left me feeling generally dissatisfied. There aren’t any that stand out as noteworthy and the overall impression was unremarkable. The book cover is bold and eye catching, it’s initially what caught my attention.
So many of these short stories end abruptly and left me feeling generally dissatisfied. There aren’t any that stand out as noteworthy and the overall impression was unremarkable. The book cover is bold and eye catching, it’s initially what caught my attention.
October 2, 2025
Short stories are a finicky thing. Either you like them or not. With this one, I was more on the meh-side of things. Which does not necessarily mean they were bad! They were well written, easily read. But most of them didn’t really stick with me, sadly.
Also, the one short story I liked best, the very last one in the book (Foundations) was honestly not meant to be a short story. Put that story in a full-length novel and it works better. More capability to flesh out details etc instead of rushing through.
Generally, a good book. But lacking a memorability and sometimes execution. The creative processes and ideas put into it are an A+ tho.
Also, the one short story I liked best, the very last one in the book (Foundations) was honestly not meant to be a short story. Put that story in a full-length novel and it works better. More capability to flesh out details etc instead of rushing through.
Generally, a good book. But lacking a memorability and sometimes execution. The creative processes and ideas put into it are an A+ tho.
November 25, 2024
Bad Houses is a stranger book than you think it is (or want it to be). As you press deeper and deeper into this unconnected but distantly related collection of short stories, you try to predict when reality will shift just so, because it always does. Every time. No exceptions--except maybe for "Of Ropes and Islands" and "Foundations," but more on those two pieces later. Otherwise--and possibly including "Foundations," reality isn't reality, or reality is that deep fear you have in a reliably creaky house at night.
When I was about a third of the way through this book, I thought of John Elizabeth Stintzi as a wannabe Aimee Bender. That might be unfair to Stintzi, who is a good writer in her own right, but it's also a high compliment, as Bender has perfected the quirky transmogrification of reality (and characters) in short fiction. To put it another way, who wouldn't want to be compared to Mickey Mantle? But as the stories grew more varied, I realized that Stintzi's writing only resembles Bender's. Whereas Bender creates entire worlds in twelve pages, Stintzi would have you believe that her worlds exist within our world--that they are our world. That's asking a lot of the reader, but Stintzi mostly succeeds, especially in stories later in the book.
Most of my reading of short fiction is through the Greatest American Short Stories series, so I'm used to reading stories in what seems like a random order. (That series normally orders stories alphabetically by writer's last name.) But most short-story writers, like most musical artists, pay very close attention to the order in which their stories appear. Stintzi did what seems like the worst possible job of this, as the first two stories in the book are two of the three worst stories in the entire collection. Things do get better, but then "Of Ropes and Islands" makes its appearance toward the end, and the reader is left to wonder why this "story" was even included. Unlike every other story, there's almost no physical detail, the main (and only) character is flat; and it's the worst kind of short story: a philosophical investigation of the meaning of love, partnering, and loneliness--with only one character!
"Foundations" is a lovely, though frustrating, work of fiction; but it's more of a mini-novella than a short story proper. It's not even terribly long for a short story, but its subject matter and the jumps in time tell me that Stintzi will probably expand it into a novel, or maybe she'll write a bunch of prequels and within-the-timeline-of related short stories. After reading all of these mostly very short pieces, "Foundations" feels like too much. It would have worked better as the third or fourth work in the collection.
I said that the stories are unconnected, and while that's technically true in that they don't share any of the same characters or seem to exist in the same timeline or universe, they're all thematically related. Each story except for "Of Ropes and Islands" is about a bad house. Not a bad home or a figuratively or morally bad place, but an actual house--or multiple houses. I didn't think she could keep it up throughout, but she does, and the results are truly remarkable. I challenge any writer to write 250 pages of short stories that share a theme but are otherwise totally unrelated. It just seems like a hopeless challenge, as the stories would seem to get repetitive, but Stintzi manages to pull it off, mostly. With too many typos.
Stintzi was born in Canada, so she uses Canadian spellings throughout the book, even when all the characters are American and the entire story takes place in the US. This is fine as a stylistic choice, mostly, but when the stories are told in first person, which they rarely are, it is grating, because why would an American first-person narrator use "pyjamas" or "colour" or "neighbourhood"? There are also weak nods toward social-justice topics within some of the stories that feel like missed opportunities. It's unclear whether these asides are meant to evoke deeper meanings related to the plot. I couldn't find any such essential connections, so they came across to me as virtue-signaling, or should I say, "virtue-signalling"?
When I was about a third of the way through this book, I thought of John Elizabeth Stintzi as a wannabe Aimee Bender. That might be unfair to Stintzi, who is a good writer in her own right, but it's also a high compliment, as Bender has perfected the quirky transmogrification of reality (and characters) in short fiction. To put it another way, who wouldn't want to be compared to Mickey Mantle? But as the stories grew more varied, I realized that Stintzi's writing only resembles Bender's. Whereas Bender creates entire worlds in twelve pages, Stintzi would have you believe that her worlds exist within our world--that they are our world. That's asking a lot of the reader, but Stintzi mostly succeeds, especially in stories later in the book.
Most of my reading of short fiction is through the Greatest American Short Stories series, so I'm used to reading stories in what seems like a random order. (That series normally orders stories alphabetically by writer's last name.) But most short-story writers, like most musical artists, pay very close attention to the order in which their stories appear. Stintzi did what seems like the worst possible job of this, as the first two stories in the book are two of the three worst stories in the entire collection. Things do get better, but then "Of Ropes and Islands" makes its appearance toward the end, and the reader is left to wonder why this "story" was even included. Unlike every other story, there's almost no physical detail, the main (and only) character is flat; and it's the worst kind of short story: a philosophical investigation of the meaning of love, partnering, and loneliness--with only one character!
"Foundations" is a lovely, though frustrating, work of fiction; but it's more of a mini-novella than a short story proper. It's not even terribly long for a short story, but its subject matter and the jumps in time tell me that Stintzi will probably expand it into a novel, or maybe she'll write a bunch of prequels and within-the-timeline-of related short stories. After reading all of these mostly very short pieces, "Foundations" feels like too much. It would have worked better as the third or fourth work in the collection.
I said that the stories are unconnected, and while that's technically true in that they don't share any of the same characters or seem to exist in the same timeline or universe, they're all thematically related. Each story except for "Of Ropes and Islands" is about a bad house. Not a bad home or a figuratively or morally bad place, but an actual house--or multiple houses. I didn't think she could keep it up throughout, but she does, and the results are truly remarkable. I challenge any writer to write 250 pages of short stories that share a theme but are otherwise totally unrelated. It just seems like a hopeless challenge, as the stories would seem to get repetitive, but Stintzi manages to pull it off, mostly. With too many typos.
Stintzi was born in Canada, so she uses Canadian spellings throughout the book, even when all the characters are American and the entire story takes place in the US. This is fine as a stylistic choice, mostly, but when the stories are told in first person, which they rarely are, it is grating, because why would an American first-person narrator use "pyjamas" or "colour" or "neighbourhood"? There are also weak nods toward social-justice topics within some of the stories that feel like missed opportunities. It's unclear whether these asides are meant to evoke deeper meanings related to the plot. I couldn't find any such essential connections, so they came across to me as virtue-signaling, or should I say, "virtue-signalling"?
September 7, 2024
Bad Houses is a collection of carefully-crafted and intense stories that transform seemingly-everyday settings into sites of horror, but also sites of reflection. The stories ask readers to reconsider the world we live in and our relationships with others by viewing it through a surrealist lens. Many of the stories focus on feelings of disconnection and the desire for belonging, with some potentially happy endings, but mostly not. At times, this made the stories difficult to read because there was no easy fix to the characters' problems - tragedy is sometimes inevitable - so I took my time between stories to process. Overall, it's a good collection to read slowly, savour, and appreciate how JES breaks down our world - sometimes literally - to explore the stuff, good or bad, underneath.
The writing is impressive, with tight plotting and immersive narratives. I've enjoyed each of JES's books, but this collection stands out, even from among their previous work - you can really see their growth as a writer here. This collection is one I hope to re-read in the future.
The writing is impressive, with tight plotting and immersive narratives. I've enjoyed each of JES's books, but this collection stands out, even from among their previous work - you can really see their growth as a writer here. This collection is one I hope to re-read in the future.
January 12, 2025
This collection reminded me why I love short stories. John Elizabeth Stintzi's writing is clear and confident, drawing the reader in to seemingly everyday worlds where mess has just begun to erupt. I look forward to revisiting these stories and reading more from JES.
October 27, 2024
A collection of twisted stories, I started out enjoying this book, but by the end I was tired of all the stories somehow having essentially the same tone. Every main character seemed bewildered but resigned to whatever nonsense was happening to them.
August 7, 2025
I was really excited for this - I'd heard that it was whimsical yet dark, my favorite combination. And I suppose that's true - but in focusing on the whimsical and dark there doesn't always seem to be a lot of space left for character development or plot. I know, I know - they're short stories - but the best of these (Dumb House, Elephant, The Troll Patch, Engagement, Which House) show that the author is right up there with the best short fiction writers in packing depth and meaning into a small package. The problem is that by theming the collection around houses and living spaces with some degree of malevolent sentience, they may have limited their ability to tell a wider range of stories that would stand apart from one another. As individual stories, any of these would stand out in an anthology or magazine - but as a group they begin to feel repetitive. The very Canadian narrator (excellent choice) does a fine job, but having a variety of voices may have also helped with differentiation. I hope that this will someday be a minor growing pain in a vast catalog of work - this is clearly an author with a lot to say and some innovative ways of saying it - but for now this might be a better one to read in installments rather than listening straight through.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
November 24, 2024
A hidden gem!! I'm lucky audio is just now coming out for this one (I'm assuming?), giving me the chance to stumble upon it on NetGalley.
Hilarious, strange, and unexpected. The writing was great, the narration was even better. She pronounces her long A's like my late gma <3
The downside I found with this one was that the stories I didn't enjoy, I didn't enjoy at all. The ones I did enjoy, I LOVED. I typically write down my rating for each story when reading collection - Bad Houses had multiple stories get higher than 5/5 (will update to add exact stories when I can find my notebook that was kidnapped by my kid lol).
As always when I read a story collection, I will now suggest you read Out There by Kate Folk and Thanks For This Riot by Janelle Bassett if you enjoyed this one.
Thank you bunches to NetGalley, John Elizabeth Stintzi and ECW Press for the ALC in exchange for my honest review! I'd also love to be able to thank the narrator, but I can't find her name anywhere :(
Hilarious, strange, and unexpected. The writing was great, the narration was even better. She pronounces her long A's like my late gma <3
The downside I found with this one was that the stories I didn't enjoy, I didn't enjoy at all. The ones I did enjoy, I LOVED. I typically write down my rating for each story when reading collection - Bad Houses had multiple stories get higher than 5/5 (will update to add exact stories when I can find my notebook that was kidnapped by my kid lol).
As always when I read a story collection, I will now suggest you read Out There by Kate Folk and Thanks For This Riot by Janelle Bassett if you enjoyed this one.
Thank you bunches to NetGalley, John Elizabeth Stintzi and ECW Press for the ALC in exchange for my honest review! I'd also love to be able to thank the narrator, but I can't find her name anywhere :(
December 10, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and ECW Press Audio for the Audio ARC!
I love story collections, and the quirkier, the better! So, needless to say, this one hit just right. The author finds and plumbs psychological depths that any person should be intrigued by, while still keeping things lighthearted and never quite predictable. My favorite story is Which House?, which addresses the serious issue of a person coming to realize that they need to change the way they treat others and then actually making changes, within the context of a magical story that never quite lets you get comfortable. All of the stories were well-written and very readable.
I love story collections, and the quirkier, the better! So, needless to say, this one hit just right. The author finds and plumbs psychological depths that any person should be intrigued by, while still keeping things lighthearted and never quite predictable. My favorite story is Which House?, which addresses the serious issue of a person coming to realize that they need to change the way they treat others and then actually making changes, within the context of a magical story that never quite lets you get comfortable. All of the stories were well-written and very readable.
July 1, 2025
Did you read all three “scary stories to tell in the dark” books as a kid and find them not only not scary but at times funny? Like dark and twisted short stories? Have I got a book for you!
Prefer a truly scary story? Burn a culinary experiment in the microwave until what you see when you open the door is nothing but solid billowing yellow clouds of thick smoke. That’s a frightening encounter that will stick with you for days! lol May you not make the same miscalculation! Ta.
Prefer a truly scary story? Burn a culinary experiment in the microwave until what you see when you open the door is nothing but solid billowing yellow clouds of thick smoke. That’s a frightening encounter that will stick with you for days! lol May you not make the same miscalculation! Ta.
March 26, 2024
If you like dark, strange stories, these are for you. I had a lot of fun putting this one together, and doing all the illustrations that are also in the book. A throwback to the good old days (only with more exploited troll labor, decomposing elephants, magic Jesus action-figures, and nasty animate houses).
October 24, 2024
I was with them for most of My Volcano, but while I found these stories oddly compelling, I really would be hard pressed to adequately describe WTF I just read. These stories were just too weird for me.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.
December 14, 2024
A very good, eclectic collection of stories from a new to me author. I enjoyed all of the tales here and especially liked the opening and closing stories – perfect bookends.
The narrator did a wonderful job with pacing and cadence and really added to the subtle nuances of the stories. Recommended!
Thank you, Netgalley for the audiobook review copy!
The narrator did a wonderful job with pacing and cadence and really added to the subtle nuances of the stories. Recommended!
Thank you, Netgalley for the audiobook review copy!
December 22, 2024
I loved Bad Houses, loved all the short stories, and some of them really spoke to me, in particular Grampa's Bag of Bubonic's Brood, The Troll Patch and Which House?.
Something about these absurd stories made me feel like a kid, filled with wonder and living in a world where so many more things are possible.
This is the first I read of JES, I'll likely try their other books!
Something about these absurd stories made me feel like a kid, filled with wonder and living in a world where so many more things are possible.
This is the first I read of JES, I'll likely try their other books!
November 12, 2024
Incredibly strange, and for every moment that it caught my attention...it was followed up by things that either left me cold or simply put me off. This is one of those books for which I'm not a receptive audience, though I can see why it would tickle the funny bone of other readers.
Read
December 13, 2024Escaping the Malevolent Structures that Trap Us: An illustrated interview with John Elizabeth Stintzi about their fabulist short story collection "Bad Houses"
https://electricliterature.com/john-e...
https://electricliterature.com/john-e...
December 19, 2024
In the tradition of Kafka, Vonnegut and George Saunders, John Elizabeth Stintzi uses fantastical twists on reality to dig into the marrow of human lives in both comical and disturbing ways. Let this story collection take you into myriad strange yet strangely real worlds. 8/10
January 21, 2025
Wow, I have no idea what I just listened to. I read a lot. I understand what I read. I do not understand the point of this at all.
Maybe print version is slightly better.
I cannot even leave a decent review.
Sorry, obviously not my kind of book.
Maybe print version is slightly better.
I cannot even leave a decent review.
Sorry, obviously not my kind of book.
February 11, 2025
I think I just… completely missed the purpose of this collection of short stories? I found myself wanting them to be scarier or not getting the overall message. I’m glad this resonates with some - it just wasn’t my cup of tea!
December 22, 2024
QUE PEDO. que cuentos tan cabrones y raros. no de miedo pero si de lo que unx habita. muy queer. ame casi todos
December 31, 2024
Some good story concepts, but none of them quite landed for me. I’d recommend watching Monster House over reading this.
April 3, 2025
i love a good shirt story collection and this has been one of my faves
Read
May 5, 2025dnf
July 5, 2025
Entirely forgettable collection of short horror stories.
July 10, 2025
What the heck! Weird. DNF
July 13, 2025
I listened to the audiobook. I didn't realize it was a bunch of short stories so it made no sense. Probably my fault. But the transition wasn't done well nor the wrap ups.
July 20, 2025
An interesting collection of stories and characters, including houses with a mind of their own, trolls and all sorts of eclectic scenarios.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews