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The Drowned Life
There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry—and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . .
There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world's demands that they simply give up and go under. . . .
In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction's most original artists.
There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world's demands that they simply give up and go under. . . .
In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction's most original artists.
290 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2008
49 people are currently reading
1977 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Ford
238 books508 followersJeffrey 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
August 31, 2010
The phrase ‘dream-like’ in relation to a work of fiction, particularly speculative fiction, is invoked with such regularity as to be rendered almost meaningless. Nevertheless it is the first thing I think of when it comes to describing Jeffrey Ford’s wonderful new collection of short stories, The Drowned Life.
So many stories here contain the cock-eyed logic, sense of menace, dissolution of firm boundaries and Daliesque suspension of the laws of science, that it seems as if Ford has perfect recall of his own nightly journeys and the requisite craft to bring these dark children into the waking day world.
Here are some of the examples of the unsettling, weirdly beautiful and nightmarish scenarios Ford has on display here:
‘The Drowned Life’ The title track of the album. An under water city exists side by side with our chaotic earth; it is a repository of lost souls, a place one goes to when one has given up. A husband and father decides to descend to this world when life becomes too hard to handle. Down below there is a crazy, ghostly version of the life above, populated with shambling half-humans in varying degrees of decay, living lives that are desperate and futile echoes of their previous fuller existences. The man realizes his mistake and plots his escape via underwater pay phone with his truculent son above.
‘The Night Whiskey’ A rare drink is made from a berry that grows in one town only. When drank people get to visit the realm of the dead where they can converse with the beloved and not so beloved departed. After these visits the ritually chosen drinkers are left so depleted and docile that they must be collected from tree branches with long poles.
‘The Dismantled Invention of Fate’ An astronaut meets a beautiful alien and they fall in love. She does or does not die tragically. Their long and loving life is or isn’t an imagination of her dying brain. They are reunited or not through a device of such complexity that Rube Goldberg would be slack-jawed.
‘The Way He does it’ A magician performs a signature trick that is never described except for it’s effect on those who view it. To some the trick is so obscene that they despise him to others it is so sublimely beautiful, so utterly transcendent that they are left teary-eyed and transformed.
There are over a dozen tales here, all worth reading, and I will mention two more only because of their utter lack of the fantastic underscores how good Ford is: 1)Present from the Past- a straight forward story of a family coping with a mother’s terminal cancer, touching in it’s details, spot on in it’s delineations of the ritual roles adult children assume in catastrophe. 2) The Bedroom Light-about a couple huddled in bed together before they sleep, on the night when a woman suffered a miscarriage. They imagine various things about the denizens of their apartment complex. It’s a subtly sweet little story filled with every day grace and regret that most literary writers would give up small portions of their bodies to have written.
Ford’s work, while filled with crazy, foreboding and whimsical fantastical elements are also firmly rooted in reality. So many of these stories contain the salt of the earth drinking and smoking folks that a Steinbeck might have chronicled-ratty low-end middle class people that would fit right in a Roseanne episode or a Raymond Carver story. You never doubt for a moment that real people, wounded and beautiful, fucked-up and fine, are being impacted by the crazy shit that Ford conceives for them.
Ford’s wonderful veracity of humble human character is what makes the vastness of his imagination shine even brighter, the utter uniqueness of his scary visions more visceral and compelling. By unloading his cornucopia of nightmare and dreamscapes down in the vale of every day struggle to get by existence he makes you feel a depth of emotion and tug of empathy you wouldn’t usually get from more ethereal fantasy collections. A classic of it’s kind, and a rarity too-highly recommended for dreamers, readers and lovers of the dark.
So many stories here contain the cock-eyed logic, sense of menace, dissolution of firm boundaries and Daliesque suspension of the laws of science, that it seems as if Ford has perfect recall of his own nightly journeys and the requisite craft to bring these dark children into the waking day world.
Here are some of the examples of the unsettling, weirdly beautiful and nightmarish scenarios Ford has on display here:
‘The Drowned Life’ The title track of the album. An under water city exists side by side with our chaotic earth; it is a repository of lost souls, a place one goes to when one has given up. A husband and father decides to descend to this world when life becomes too hard to handle. Down below there is a crazy, ghostly version of the life above, populated with shambling half-humans in varying degrees of decay, living lives that are desperate and futile echoes of their previous fuller existences. The man realizes his mistake and plots his escape via underwater pay phone with his truculent son above.
‘The Night Whiskey’ A rare drink is made from a berry that grows in one town only. When drank people get to visit the realm of the dead where they can converse with the beloved and not so beloved departed. After these visits the ritually chosen drinkers are left so depleted and docile that they must be collected from tree branches with long poles.
‘The Dismantled Invention of Fate’ An astronaut meets a beautiful alien and they fall in love. She does or does not die tragically. Their long and loving life is or isn’t an imagination of her dying brain. They are reunited or not through a device of such complexity that Rube Goldberg would be slack-jawed.
‘The Way He does it’ A magician performs a signature trick that is never described except for it’s effect on those who view it. To some the trick is so obscene that they despise him to others it is so sublimely beautiful, so utterly transcendent that they are left teary-eyed and transformed.
There are over a dozen tales here, all worth reading, and I will mention two more only because of their utter lack of the fantastic underscores how good Ford is: 1)Present from the Past- a straight forward story of a family coping with a mother’s terminal cancer, touching in it’s details, spot on in it’s delineations of the ritual roles adult children assume in catastrophe. 2) The Bedroom Light-about a couple huddled in bed together before they sleep, on the night when a woman suffered a miscarriage. They imagine various things about the denizens of their apartment complex. It’s a subtly sweet little story filled with every day grace and regret that most literary writers would give up small portions of their bodies to have written.
Ford’s work, while filled with crazy, foreboding and whimsical fantastical elements are also firmly rooted in reality. So many of these stories contain the salt of the earth drinking and smoking folks that a Steinbeck might have chronicled-ratty low-end middle class people that would fit right in a Roseanne episode or a Raymond Carver story. You never doubt for a moment that real people, wounded and beautiful, fucked-up and fine, are being impacted by the crazy shit that Ford conceives for them.
Ford’s wonderful veracity of humble human character is what makes the vastness of his imagination shine even brighter, the utter uniqueness of his scary visions more visceral and compelling. By unloading his cornucopia of nightmare and dreamscapes down in the vale of every day struggle to get by existence he makes you feel a depth of emotion and tug of empathy you wouldn’t usually get from more ethereal fantasy collections. A classic of it’s kind, and a rarity too-highly recommended for dreamers, readers and lovers of the dark.
June 16, 2016
If you could drink a shot of whiskey and be transported to a world where you get to visit with a departed relative or friend, would you do it? I would in a minute and so would many of the people in this small town. Once a year, there is a lottery system to choose who gets to participate. Someone has to go find these participants in the morning (they have a tendency to climb trees while under the influence) and this year one of these men is a newbie. And of course, this is the year that something strange happens....
I really got into this story, perhaps because there are so many departed people that I would adore to have another conversation with!
I really got into this story, perhaps because there are so many departed people that I would adore to have another conversation with!
November 28, 2011
jeffrey ford is my new discovery... i stumbled into a reading of his at readercon in massachusetts back in july, and then a second one at the world fantasy convention in san diego a few weeks ago... went home after that, watched a video of a third reading of his on youtube and then promptly impulse-bought every book he ever wrote off the internet... been reading four of them at once over the past few weeks and imagine i will get through them all before the end of the year... really not sure how i could've made it this far without ever hearing of this guy, he's pretty much exactly what i'm always looking for... he's got what seems to be a limitless imagination (which he takes completely seriously), and a sense of the mystery and horror of life (which he tempers with compassion and humor). on top of that he's a got a beautiful, flowing, endlessly readable style... every time i start one of his stories, i read it all the way to the end without ever looking up, ever glancing at the time, ever noticing the page count, ever sighing or wondering when it will end-- which is pretty amazing, considering how short my attention span is these days. favorite stories in this book: "the drowned life," "the night whiskey," "the scribble mind," and (above all) "present from the past," which i really thought was just fantastic. ford reminds me a little of philip k. dick, only less manic, more at ease. his endings don't always resolve the way i'd like, but in his case for some reason i can't help but feel it's my failing and not his... and that some day the other shoe will drop somewhere inside my mind... meanwhile, when they do resolve "right" (as in "present from the past") they can be absolutely devastating... really love this guy...
March 9, 2018
This is an amazing collection. Jeffrey Ford is a relatively new discovery to me but it's immediately obvious that he's the real deal. If you dig dark, surreal speculative fiction, it doesn't get any better than this.
January 27, 2009
The first two stories in this collection put this in the category of the best books of 2008 and in a high place in Ford’s work. These mix warm humor with stunning surrealism, black humored takes on death and life with disturbing imagery presented in an accessible way. “The Drowned Life” and “The Night Whisky” are worlds of dream and nightmares with funny friend as your navigator. This collection continues in quality and variety, the black comic absurdisms of “The Way he Does it” (reminding me of Barthelme) and “The Manticore Spell”(little like Rhys Hughes), autobiographical sketches that aren’t self indulgent, but deeply personal and poignant, the layers of reality in deeply rich “The Dismantled Invention of Fate.”, Lynchian nightmare of “The Bedroom Light”(shades of Eraserhead), “The House of Four Seasons”with its nonstop dreamlike invention and bizarre humor is a surrealist masterpiece skirting on the edge of lucid thought(reminds me of Gene Wolfe’s “Death of Dr. Island” and Stepan Chapman’s Troika with a similar surreal asylum conceit) and the “Dreaming Wind” a marvelous magic realist fable of loss with the titular wind acting like the dream plague of Angela Carter’s “Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffmann, but the story is about when it stops coming. This has the variety of Ford’s first collection and the consistency of his second, making his strongest yet. Those who have missed his work can start here, I believe.
May 7, 2010
Some time back my brother-in-law David and I read the same book at the same time. We chose "The Drowned Life", a short story collection by Jeffrey Ford. And for the first time when doing this, we were both reading the same things at about the same time.
Many of the stories had been published elsewhere, but here is a rundown on what makes up this collection:
"The Drowned Life"
"Ariadne's Mother"
"The Night Whiskey"
"A Few Things About Ants"
"Under the Bottom of the Lake"
"Present From The Past"
"The Manticore Spell"
"The Fat One"
"The Dismantled Invention of Fate"
"What's Sure to Come"
"The Way He Does It"
"The Scribble Mind"
"Bedroom Light"
"In the House of Four Seasons"
"The Dreaming Wind"
"The Golden Dragon"
I have become a fan of Ford's since the first time I read his work (his novel "The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque"). All of his books, whether a novel or a short story collection, I have enjoyed on some level or another. I think he is a bit underrated as an author.
Like with his previous collection of short stories I read, Ford has brought a lot of himself and his life into it. A few of the stories he mentions his real life wife and kids, the place he grew up, where he lives now, and even an uncle that works as a Walt Whitman impersonator. Quite possibly is what makes this collection most interesting. There are truly fantastical stories here. "In the House of Four Seasons" and the title story fit this category. Where as "A Few Things About Ants" and "The Fat One" seem like they are part of his biography. Though "Ants" is more like a bunch of statements or observations all wrapped up in a story that was a real dud in my opinion, and the only one. "The Manticore Spell" is the only other story that's suspect. It just didn't give me anything to be intrigued by, though still well written.
"The Night Whiskey" and "Bedroom Light" were my favorites. But many other warranted my attention. "Scribble Mind" are rather interesting, though the ending seemed to be heading in an anti-climatic area before recovering. "The Way He Does It" was a fun play on explaining the consequences of something, but never saying what it is. Every story had something to give the reader, and I found something interesting in each. Even if I wasn't that interested in "Ants".
"In the House of Four Seasons" was one of the hardest stories to read. It is not in chronological order and the character all went by different names. It got confusing as it went along. However, it was very satisfying. Though quite possibly would have been even better if stretched into novella length. It would have given more room to stretch the crazy order that the reader is given information and given room to do more with the characters' background. It falls into the category of "great story, and could have been better yet if only ....."
Another great outing for Mr. Ford. Can't wait, as usual, for his next book.
Many of the stories had been published elsewhere, but here is a rundown on what makes up this collection:
"The Drowned Life"
"Ariadne's Mother"
"The Night Whiskey"
"A Few Things About Ants"
"Under the Bottom of the Lake"
"Present From The Past"
"The Manticore Spell"
"The Fat One"
"The Dismantled Invention of Fate"
"What's Sure to Come"
"The Way He Does It"
"The Scribble Mind"
"Bedroom Light"
"In the House of Four Seasons"
"The Dreaming Wind"
"The Golden Dragon"
I have become a fan of Ford's since the first time I read his work (his novel "The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque"). All of his books, whether a novel or a short story collection, I have enjoyed on some level or another. I think he is a bit underrated as an author.
Like with his previous collection of short stories I read, Ford has brought a lot of himself and his life into it. A few of the stories he mentions his real life wife and kids, the place he grew up, where he lives now, and even an uncle that works as a Walt Whitman impersonator. Quite possibly is what makes this collection most interesting. There are truly fantastical stories here. "In the House of Four Seasons" and the title story fit this category. Where as "A Few Things About Ants" and "The Fat One" seem like they are part of his biography. Though "Ants" is more like a bunch of statements or observations all wrapped up in a story that was a real dud in my opinion, and the only one. "The Manticore Spell" is the only other story that's suspect. It just didn't give me anything to be intrigued by, though still well written.
"The Night Whiskey" and "Bedroom Light" were my favorites. But many other warranted my attention. "Scribble Mind" are rather interesting, though the ending seemed to be heading in an anti-climatic area before recovering. "The Way He Does It" was a fun play on explaining the consequences of something, but never saying what it is. Every story had something to give the reader, and I found something interesting in each. Even if I wasn't that interested in "Ants".
"In the House of Four Seasons" was one of the hardest stories to read. It is not in chronological order and the character all went by different names. It got confusing as it went along. However, it was very satisfying. Though quite possibly would have been even better if stretched into novella length. It would have given more room to stretch the crazy order that the reader is given information and given room to do more with the characters' background. It falls into the category of "great story, and could have been better yet if only ....."
Another great outing for Mr. Ford. Can't wait, as usual, for his next book.
March 5, 2009
Hands down the best collection I've ever read. Nebula-Winner Ford's (The Well-Built City Trilogy) limitless imagination pops off the page in linguistic fireworks with narratives nestled like Russian dolls in his third collection, a 16-story opus that reads like a primer to the genres of speculative fiction. In "Night Whiskey," a bizarre small town celebrates the annual harvest of the deathberry, which grants passage to the afterlife for a single night. "The Dismantled Invention of Fate" follows a cavalier astronaut across the universe where he discovers love in the form of a blue-skinned warrior amid forests of red grass. In "The Manticore Spell," a medieval apprentice of the occult investigates the appearance of a mythical beast, while "The House of Four Seasons" imagines a distant-future sanatorium where patients fight to escape woods and meadows encapsulated at the bottom of a dark lake. Each story acts as a portal to worlds both peculiar and hauntingly beautiful, masterfully realized by Ford's transcendent prose. While fans of fantasy, SF, and horror will find plenty of thrills in this instant classic, Ford's accessible, literary yarns will appeal to any reader hungry for a unique experience.
January 26, 2009
it's early and i'm not feeling eloquent, but: this book is stellar. the two stories mentioned in the description - deathberry, underwater world - are among the best in the book, but there are others just as delightfully odd and vivid.
in fact, delightfully odd is probably the best way to describe this collection of short stories.
there are a few stories that didn't quite grab me, but on the whole, Ford's use of language and character development is incredibly compelling.
in fact, delightfully odd is probably the best way to describe this collection of short stories.
there are a few stories that didn't quite grab me, but on the whole, Ford's use of language and character development is incredibly compelling.
January 24, 2009
great short stories - night whiskey which explores the deathberry and the perilous art of harvesting drunks from trees is amazing and the story about the story at the bottom of the lake is ingeniously told in the style of a seance with the author suddenly seeing things and then having things vanish and then suddenly seeing new things
the rest are various forms of oddity that would make for bizarre but beautiful movies
i highly recommend it
the rest are various forms of oddity that would make for bizarre but beautiful movies
i highly recommend it
January 15, 2015
Absolutely incredible. I didn't want to read this, it sat on my shelf for a long old while before eventually I sighed, and picked it up.
I was thrown away. Each story is beautiful, and unique and so so wonderfully written. 'The branches shook like the bottom lip of a woman on Thorazine.' Just ugh, lovely.
I was thrown away. Each story is beautiful, and unique and so so wonderfully written. 'The branches shook like the bottom lip of a woman on Thorazine.' Just ugh, lovely.
January 13, 2009
One of the best short story writers working today, and this may be his best collection yet. The title story, "The Drowned Life" is nothing short of a minor miracle - poignant, surreal, scary and hilarious all at once. Excellent collection from a writer who is only getting better.
August 29, 2011
Wow. Most of these stories are stunning. They redefine to me what fantasy fiction can do. Maybe I've been missing the boat the past few years and this is nothing new, but it's opened my eyes to all kinds of possibilities.
September 11, 2021
Solid 3
its not bad by any means, the book is interestingly written, but at the same time I don't think the book was for me. More often than not, I was confused and didn't really understand the deeper metaphors of certain stories.
its not bad by any means, the book is interestingly written, but at the same time I don't think the book was for me. More often than not, I was confused and didn't really understand the deeper metaphors of certain stories.
August 13, 2025
My son and I do this thing where we go to the public library and take turns selecting a shelf for one another. The deal is we must pick a book to borrow from that shelf. That's how I came to read The Drowned Life.
This was a great find! A collection of short stories with a touch of fantasy woven throughout each of them, and there is no limit to Ford's ability to take the mundane or ordinary and transform it into something magical. He also lived in South Jersey at some point, and the Wawa references in The Fat One made me laugh.
This was a great find! A collection of short stories with a touch of fantasy woven throughout each of them, and there is no limit to Ford's ability to take the mundane or ordinary and transform it into something magical. He also lived in South Jersey at some point, and the Wawa references in The Fat One made me laugh.
January 13, 2020
A scattershot collection of stories. Only some i really liked. Night Whiskey was so good I’d read again.
April 23, 2009
Brilliant and unusual. A kind of fantastical realism in these books that reminds me of the spirit behind Grimm's fairy tales. Probably would be liked by fans of Gaiman. I am not traditionally a fan of fantasy or sci-fi, but I will definitely be seeking out more of this author's work!
July 26, 2009
Jeffrey Ford is amazing.These short stories are all excellent. The first one I didn't like because it made me uncomfortable which just show how good he is that in so few pages he had me squirming. I now want to run out and go get all of his books because I was so impressed by this book.
August 14, 2010
Eerie. That's how I like to describe this collection of short stories. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes bizarre, but always eerie. These stories feel like written dreams, with slippery logic and offhand glimpses that you understand *just* enough to find disturbing.
January 20, 2009
Some of these stories really stuck with me. My favorite is The Scribble Mind.
March 3, 2011
Great Scott, it's magical realism done right! Highly enjoyable short stories, surreal, yet never losing sight of the story as a whole.
March 15, 2011
Dark, imaginative, Bradbury-esque collection of short stories.
Read
July 29, 2011A collection of dark short stories, dancing along and blurring the lines of science fiction and fantasy. A quick and engrossing read.
September 29, 2020
I met Jeffrey Ford at a big Literary Festival down south and we hung out with a few other people and had a grand old time. When I returned home I read his novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque which I liked a lot. He'd mentioned my own turn of the 20th Century book, The Mesmerist, as one that completely worked for him and I return the compliment. I'm not sure how I came upon this collection, but it seems to me to be two books in one, both interesting but one far more so to me. There are 17 pieces here. Among them are seven that I would consider "pure" fantasy and of these my favorite is "The Manticore," which has a really credible Medieval mind-set to it. A few of the others like "A Few Things About Ants" and "The Fat One" are amazing riffs, curling off the page like smoke from an opium pipe--and "Ants" is side-splittingly funny. The others feel much more autobiographical and those are absolute gold, no, platinum, to me. His narrative voice is so sure and he has such a sure grip on his background and characters that they all but jump off the page. "Present From the Past", What's Sure to Come, The Scribble Mind, The Bedroom Light" and especially the wickedly wise :"The Golden Dragon" are stories I will reread often and recommend to you and anyone out there. Girlfriends, old friends, family members, wives and neighbors inhabit these delicious tales. Try the fantasy ones too. They're good, just not my thing..
January 5, 2018
Jeffrey Ford is one of my favorite writers. This is the fourth book of his that I've read and the second collection of short stories ('Crackpot Palace' being the first.) He, of course, writes well but what I absolutely love about Ford is the truly original and fantastic imagination this man has. His short stories reflect this very prominently and it is not only hard to choose my favorites but it is also difficult to even explain some of them. For example, the first story in this collection, 'The Drowned Life' is beautiful and creepy in its tale of what it is like in Ford's imagination on how the dead who have drowned 'live' deep within the waters. I can't help but equate intelligence with great imaginations and the people who think big thoughts and put them to paper are a gift to us all.
March 3, 2024
What a fantastic collection of stories!! I am blown away by this man's imagination and his amazing writing style. There are just no wasted words or sentences. What luck to have just picked up this book at the local "free library"! I have now added Jeffrey Ford to my favorite authors list.
My favorite story in the collection is, The Dismantled Invention of Fate, which I read twice through. I would love to see this story play out on a big screen!
My favorite story in the collection is, The Dismantled Invention of Fate, which I read twice through. I would love to see this story play out on a big screen!
December 28, 2018
I almost gave up on this one as I wasn't enjoying the first story of the collection. But instead, I discovered Ford seems to have put his weakest allegoric story first? And as title story?
Anyway, the stories just got better and better. A very wild ride, well written, often riveting, and hard to put down.
Anyway, the stories just got better and better. A very wild ride, well written, often riveting, and hard to put down.
July 17, 2017
The Drowned Life is a fantastic collection of weird short stories. Jeffrey Ford effortlessly blends the weird, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and humour throughout the collection. The Scribble Mind and the title story were particularly good.
March 29, 2019
I have enjoyed the odd short story here and there, but this is the first book of short stories I was able to get into and read cover to cover. I am in love with Jeffrey Ford’s imagination, and think his writing is wonderful. I will definitely be reading Crackpot Palace at some point.
June 4, 2017
love Jeffrey Ford's imagination!!!
April 26, 2018
Just found this Arthur!! Really enjoyed this book!! Definitely going to check out more:))
Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews