Secret Lives

by Jeff Vandermeer

In this new collection by World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer, the secret lives of librarians, doctors, lawyers, university students, bank tellers, sex shop clerks and dozens of others are revealed for the first time. Ordered by profession, these short-short stories range from the hilarious to the somber, the absurd to the revelatory. Using real people as the springboard, VanderMeer has created a rich blend of the factual and the imaginary in which everyone gets the secret life they deserve. A luminous little book meant for dipping into one secret life at a time.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, New Weird

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

NYT bestselling writer Jeff VanderMeer has been called “the weird Thoreau” by the New Yorker for his engagement with ecological issues. His most recent novel, the national bestseller Borne, received wide-spread critical acclaim and his prior novels include the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance). Annihilation won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, has been translated into 35 languages, and was made into a film from Paramount Pictures directed by Alex Garland. His nonfiction has appeared in New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and the Washington Post. He has coedited several iconic anthologies with his wife, the Hugo Award winning editor. Other titles include Wonderbook, the world’s first fully illustrated creative writing guide. VanderMeer served as the 2016-2017 Trias Writer in Residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He has spoken at the Guggenheim, the Library of Congress, and the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination.

VanderMeer was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. This experience, and the resulting trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, deeply influenced him.

Jeff is married to Ann VanderMeer, who is currently an acquiring editor at Tor.com and has won the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award for her editing of magazines and anthologies. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with two cats and thousands of books.

Reviews

[Emanuela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Che genere di esistenza segreta può avere la gente normale? Sei abbastanza curioso ed immaginativo da costruire addosso al commesso di un negozio, al pensionato o ad un impiegato una storia che ha dell'incredibile?

Ci é riuscito perfettamente VanderMeer con questa raccolta in cui le vite parallele dei personaggi sono così strane e fantasiose da soddisfare tutti i gusti: vite costruite su un ideale, su particolari stati psichici, su visioni psichedeliche o paranormali ma anche sull'avventura o il classico spionaggio. Alcune, poi, sono così criptiche che il segreto rimane celato, altre hanno segreti apparenti e segreti veri.

Tutti i protagonisti sono introdotti con la descrizione del loro lavoro che quasi sempre ha a che fare con i libri. Casuale?

Mi sono piaciute tante vite segrete, in particolare "The Secret Life of Librarian Bob Scheffel"
In cosa consiste? Eh eh, é un segreto ;)

[Letizia Sechi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if you receive a stamp from an unknown land, or if you could understand every dust whisper paying the right attention, or if you had an invisible friend that doesn't speak so much?

I've been fascinated by these little precious lives VanDerMeer describes in this book: so common existences, so unpredictable secrets to discover.

[Francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi ha fatto molto piacere leggere finalmente qualcosa di Jeff VanDerMeer, che di recente seguo anche suo blog, Estatic Days.

Il libro è una raccolta delle vite segrete di una serie di più o meno originali personaggi, alcuni legati tra loro, accomunati tutti dal possedere appunto una vita segreta, ovvero una passione, un’attività, un hobby che coltivano con entusiasmo e in segreto, all’insaputa di tutti coloro che li circondano.
Questa mondo alternativo in cui si muovono è sempre un qualcosa di fantastico, stravagante, assolutamente fuori dall’ordinario, estroso, ricco di sorprese e curiosità.

Tutti i brevi racconti traboccano di immaginazione e meraviglia, ricordano il lato fanciullesco che alcune persone non vogliono perdere del tutto, ritenendolo un valore: è la voglia di scoprire ciò che sta al di là dell’abitudine e che soggiace sotto il velo del reale, del visibile, di coltivare il lato magico dell’esistenza.
Alcuni protagonisti sono assolutamente folli, bizzarri; le storie conquistano e non si riesce a fermare la lettura, avvinti in un universi paralleli – a volte più realistici, altre soprattutto fantastici, ma sempre avventurosi e stupefacenti, traboccanti di genialità e stranezze.

Se la vita segreta di ciascuno è riconducibile alla voglia di andare oltre la realtà, di non cedere al grigiore dell’esistenza ma coglierne i lati straordinari e magici, dedicarsi a loro con fervore in un cantuccio tutto per sé, in cui poter essere pianamente se stessi e senza le maschere che il comportamento sociale impone, personalmente ho attribuito un’altra lettura possibile: il fatto che spesso ci accontentiamo di conoscere le persone, anche quelle più vicine, soltanto parzialmente, senza impegno a scoprire i risvolti più reconditi del loro animo, che potrebbero celare mondi incantati che varrebbe la pena di conoscere e condividere.

Piacevolessimo, divertente, appassionante, una lettura da non perdere.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, relatively short piece of fiction surrounding actual people. This is a bit of a writing exercise of sorts, where VanderMeer essentially discusses the "secret lives" of the people mentioned within. It's all very silly and fun, and that's all you can ask for. If there's any downside, it's that 120+ pages of it can be a bit much (and the longer piece at the end, while interesting, doesn't quite fit in), but as something I jumped in and out of repeatedly over the course of a few days, it was definitely worth it.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dreamlike...or nightmarish. (Potato, potahto.)

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Favorites : Bob Sheffel, Lynn Minneman, Rajan Khanna, Constantine Markopoulos and

The Secret Like of Jennifer Seaux

Jennifer Seaux is an orchid grower and a retired ad executive. For a long time, those in surveillance who read her private journal on a regular basis thought her secret life was hearing the voices of her orchids. According to these journal entries, the voices manifested as a burbling murmur, an aristocratic mumble, a slight drunken slur while she misted them. " I like the idea of the orchids having voices. I like the idea of hearing them," she wrote. But, later, when the voices became distinct and clear, she realized they weren't the voices of the plants at all: they were the voices of the employees she worked with, or the voices of actors who performed in radio and television advertisements. It made her wonder if she'd really retired after all. It made the tenor of her journal entries change, the frequency of her entries more intermittent. Soon, it became clear to those in surveillance that Seaux was writing a book. But what kind of book? A subversive book? A book that ought to be suppressed? Or something harmless? As day followed day, the cover of Seaux's journal began to gather dust. Instead, she spent hours at the computer, typing madly. About the voices of flowers. About the voices of advertising executives. About people she imagined might be watching her. About something fresh and green struggling to reach the air through deep, fertile soil. Soon, those in surveillance lost their interest. Seaux was writing a novel. They had no interest in novels. In time, they dismantled the hidden camera and audio feeds. They stopped taking photographs of the outside of her home. They moved on to the next case. You could say that Seaux had written them out of her life... As for Seaux's novel, you may wonder what happened to it. Without surveillance we cannot be sure of anything, but you may be reading part of it right now.

[Steven Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a wonderfully strange short book. Jeff VanderMeer, known as the weird Thoreau, this is a collection of vignettes telling of the hidden biographies of variety of characters in different professions. These vignettes definitely travel into the fantastical, as well as most are pretty funny. One of my favorites is a character who is obsessed with meeting both Philip K. Dick and Sam Peckinpah. This is a problem as both are obviously dead. So he creates a time travel devise, travels back with disastrous results. Most are funny, steeped in Jeff's crazy/wonderful humor. This is a pretty quick read, at just 100 pages, and was originally a limited edition book for fans. Most of the brief, fake bios are around 3 pages. Only one is around 20 pages. If you are a fan of Jeff VanderMeer you will definitely want to read Secret Lives. This book is a wonderful diversion. It probably isn't the first book to pick up if it's the first book by Jeff VanderMeer that you have read. A good choice for first book is probably Borne or Annihilation. Both are among his best. Secret Lives, though, was a lot of fun.

[Matevž · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm fairly split about this book.. somewhere between 2 and 4 stars, though in the end I opted for the lower rating since it did not.. engage me as much as I expected.

The author presents several short narrative stories that give us insight into other peoples secret lives. These range from normal (a rare book detective) to supernatural (finding paths between worlds). Most of them are only a few pages long and are written as a third person description of the selected individual.

A few of them left me wanting for more details - what happened to the character after attaining his goal? A few give a nice feeling of closure. The rest fall somewhere in between.

An interesting, brief read, but not something special.

[Luke Dylan Ramsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

B/B+

This was a little all over the place in terms of quality. Some of the stories were quite good; others were either boring or derivative or both. The stories at the beginning and the end of the book are also quite a bit better than a lot of the stories in the middle.

[David Mueller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite interesting.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

meh

[Cale · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quick read, with most stories less than 1 page in length. There are a couple longer ones, some of which appear in other Jeff VanderMeer collections. The stories are quirky, with a few being pretty sedate, but others definitely show a surprising amount of creativity considering their source. I greatly enjoyed Rick and Peggy's story, and the loosely connected Flensing Hlanith and James Patterson stories, but my favorite is Rajan Khanna's secret life, which feels like the base for a novel but works very well on its own as well. I went in with very little in the way of expectations, but was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable these bite-size morsels of Jeff VanderMeer's quirky mind were. I'd definitely recommend fans of his track it down, and those who just want to see what can be done with what amounts to variations on a story starter concept may also appreciate it.

[David Macpherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are tiny little stories where the author takes a real person and then tells what their secret life is. Vandermeer keeps up the creativity for most of the book. He kind of changes the rules at the end and writer a few longer stories that don't exactly fit with the others, though they are still great stories. This is close to being a perfect little book.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not to be confused with another VanderMeer work called Secret Life, Secret Lives contains short glimpses into the hidden lives of seemingly ordinary folk. Often beautiful, twisted, hilarious, all of these secret lives are full of wonder. A real pleasure!

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun concept written masterfully by Jeff Vandermeer. Makes you wonder about his secret live.

Some of the stories got rewritten later to appear in The Third Bear.

[Elizabeth Creaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's pretty good this collection of short stories, some of them are very engaging. However, some of them are so short they seem unfulfilling and, as someone who is increasingly aware of unequal representation, there were vastly more stories about men.