What do you think?
Rate this book
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
Kevin Wilson's characters inhabit a world that moves seamlessly between the real and the imagined, the mundane and the fantastic. "Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in "Blowing Up On the Spot," a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted.
Southern gothic at its best, laced with humor and pathos, these wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 25, 2009
228 people are currently reading
6837 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Wilson
18 books4,770 followersKevin Wilson is the author of two collections, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award, and Baby You’re Gonna Be Mine (Ecco, 2018), and five novels, The Family Fang (Ecco, 2011), Perfect Little World (Ecco, 2017) Nothing to See Here (Ecco, 2019), a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna book club selection, Now is Not the Time to Panic, (Ecco, 2022), and Run for the Hills (Ecco, 2025).
His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2020 and 2021, as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch, where he is an Associate Professor in the English & Creative Writing Department at the University of the South.
His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Southern Review, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2020 and 2021, as well as The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch, where he is an Associate Professor in the English & Creative Writing Department at the University of the South.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 670 reviews
September 15, 2020
Dear Mr. Wilson,
I just finished your wonderfully weird collection of stories and loved every one of them. I’m beyond excited! How can I forget the Museum of Whatnots, the rent-a-grannie, the guy who worked at the Scrabble factory?
Well, do I have a deal for you! How about if you hire me as your kids’ grannie? If the kids’ grandmas are still alive, please fire them. I promise to provide you with lots of copy and inspiration. If that idea doesn’t fly (like if your kids are perfectly happy with their real grannies and my presence would traumatize them), then make me a nanny! Grannie, nanny, what’s the diff?
As a stand-in grannie (or nanny), I would do extra nice things, like hand my precious collection of forks over to the Museum of Whatnots. They would go nicely with the collection of spoons displayed there.
Hell, I’ll even steal the letter Q (of course Q; I know it’s your favorite) when my friend Tallula and I play Scrabble. I’ll pocket it when she makes one of her many pee runs. I can use the tile to teach your kids all the Q words. It would generate Quite a lot of Questions and expand their vocabularies.
I could go on and on being a pushy gal, but I’ll stop. You have enough info to decide. Wait, one last thing that could seal the deal. Don’t know why I didn’t show you my resume in the first place: I babysit for kids that think of me as their “substitute grandmother” (seriously, they say that!), since their real grandmas live in other countries. So see? I’m perfect for the job! I have experience!
I’m not just buttering you up, but I have to say your collection is going on my All-Time Favorites shelf, and it might even make it to my Blew My Mind shelf. It’s genius. Your writing chops, your imagination (which makes my eyeballs pop), your off-kilter view of reality, all make me crazy happy. Other things I love: You don’t have one extraneous word. You make ordinary characters extraordinary, all while making me feel for them (we know that’s hard to do in a short story). You have a perfect sense of the absurd, which makes me laugh and marvel. (Where oh where do you come up with these tilted plots?) When you dip into magical realism, I eat it up, even though I usually don’t like that genre. There’s profundity and compassion. And the final straw: You know how to pace a story such that I could NOT put the book down.
I now must grab my pogo stick and head out for a long bouncy-bounce. I must use up this energy somehow; I’m frantic. Next stop: The bookstore, so I can buy your novel Nothing to See Here.
Hope you’ll consider my reQuest as I think it’s Quite a good idea. See? Already I’m in the groove with the Q!
Sincerely,
An admiring pogo-sticker (with a bunch of forks I want to offload)
Note to reader: I hope Mr. Wilson sees how perfect I would be for the job. Meanwhile, check out this way old (2011) interview, where he explains how he came about writing these stories:
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/nashvillere...
Thanks to Edelweiss for the advance copy of this brilliant book.
I just finished your wonderfully weird collection of stories and loved every one of them. I’m beyond excited! How can I forget the Museum of Whatnots, the rent-a-grannie, the guy who worked at the Scrabble factory?
Well, do I have a deal for you! How about if you hire me as your kids’ grannie? If the kids’ grandmas are still alive, please fire them. I promise to provide you with lots of copy and inspiration. If that idea doesn’t fly (like if your kids are perfectly happy with their real grannies and my presence would traumatize them), then make me a nanny! Grannie, nanny, what’s the diff?
As a stand-in grannie (or nanny), I would do extra nice things, like hand my precious collection of forks over to the Museum of Whatnots. They would go nicely with the collection of spoons displayed there.
Hell, I’ll even steal the letter Q (of course Q; I know it’s your favorite) when my friend Tallula and I play Scrabble. I’ll pocket it when she makes one of her many pee runs. I can use the tile to teach your kids all the Q words. It would generate Quite a lot of Questions and expand their vocabularies.
I could go on and on being a pushy gal, but I’ll stop. You have enough info to decide. Wait, one last thing that could seal the deal. Don’t know why I didn’t show you my resume in the first place: I babysit for kids that think of me as their “substitute grandmother” (seriously, they say that!), since their real grandmas live in other countries. So see? I’m perfect for the job! I have experience!
I’m not just buttering you up, but I have to say your collection is going on my All-Time Favorites shelf, and it might even make it to my Blew My Mind shelf. It’s genius. Your writing chops, your imagination (which makes my eyeballs pop), your off-kilter view of reality, all make me crazy happy. Other things I love: You don’t have one extraneous word. You make ordinary characters extraordinary, all while making me feel for them (we know that’s hard to do in a short story). You have a perfect sense of the absurd, which makes me laugh and marvel. (Where oh where do you come up with these tilted plots?) When you dip into magical realism, I eat it up, even though I usually don’t like that genre. There’s profundity and compassion. And the final straw: You know how to pace a story such that I could NOT put the book down.
I now must grab my pogo stick and head out for a long bouncy-bounce. I must use up this energy somehow; I’m frantic. Next stop: The bookstore, so I can buy your novel Nothing to See Here.
Hope you’ll consider my reQuest as I think it’s Quite a good idea. See? Already I’m in the groove with the Q!
Sincerely,
An admiring pogo-sticker (with a bunch of forks I want to offload)
Note to reader: I hope Mr. Wilson sees how perfect I would be for the job. Meanwhile, check out this way old (2011) interview, where he explains how he came about writing these stories:
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/nashvillere...
Thanks to Edelweiss for the advance copy of this brilliant book.
July 29, 2025
4.5 Rarely do short story collections feel so evenly good as this. There was some unevenness within each story told — some were fabulous until the end, others mediocre with 5-star endings—but all were the author’s signature style of building worlds and characters that are slightly askew from the familiar, and treating those new realities with utmost respect. This creates a kind of comic tragedy thread in never-before situations, but that underneath usually resonated for me in some way.
My favorite stories (despite the unevenness within):
1) grand stand-in, where a 56-yr-old woman is hired by couples to pretend to their children that she is their grandmother
2) birds in the house, which mixes the visuals of origami with the ugliness that emerges between siblings when parents die
3) mortal kombat, a kind of HS Brokeback Mountain
4) go, fight, win, where a very non-typical teen becomes a very non-typical cheerleader
I thought most of them were excellent, and you see his theme of fire and combustion come up again. I enjoyed the variety that came from one voice.
My favorite stories (despite the unevenness within):
1) grand stand-in, where a 56-yr-old woman is hired by couples to pretend to their children that she is their grandmother
2) birds in the house, which mixes the visuals of origami with the ugliness that emerges between siblings when parents die
3) mortal kombat, a kind of HS Brokeback Mountain
4) go, fight, win, where a very non-typical teen becomes a very non-typical cheerleader
I thought most of them were excellent, and you see his theme of fire and combustion come up again. I enjoyed the variety that came from one voice.
May 19, 2020
Less than a year ago, I read Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here and was mesmerized by his ability to spin such a strange story, something so outside the realm of my typical reads, but one that hooked me from the beginning to the end. So when I saw that this new book by him, a collection of stories, I knew I was in for a treat.
To give you a taste, this is what he has to say about writing short stories in the Introduction:
”But short stories, for me, are like stealing a car, driving it as fast as you can, and crashing it into a tree, knowing you were always going to do that very thing. And then you crawl out of the car, which is now mangled and smoking, and you realize that you aren’t dead, that you’re still alive. And you look at the car, and it’s beautiful. And you walk away.”
Grand Stand-In is the first story in this collection, a story about a woman who plays a substitute grandmother to families who are trying to fill a hole in their family, either due to a loss, or they’d prefer a substitute to the real thing, someone more grandmotherly.
Blowing Up on the Spot is about a man named Leonard who works in a Scrabble factory, and has a brother who is suicidal, while at the same time trying to pursue a romance with the girl who works in the candy shop. Oh, yes, and he’s also concerned about spontaneously combusting since this is how his parents died.
Birds in the House was strange (of course) and wonderful. A story about a family, and the four men in this family, one will inherit the estate, a somewhat no-longer-in-its-prime antebellum home along with various stocks and bonds. The grandson, a teenager, must observe the contest – the folding of 1,000 cranes, 250 for each one, which will be each marked by the folder to distinguish each brother’s collection from another’s, and then all will be placed on the table. A thousand cranes that signify happiness and a long life for those who make them in the Japanese culture, where their mother was from. The mother / grandmother’s wish, in the hopes that this would somehow bring them back together, and that they would reconcile their grievances. The decision being made by which crane is left after all is said and done.
The remaining stories: Mortal Kombat; Tunneling to the Center of the Earth; The Shooting Man; The Choir Director Affair; Go, Fight, Win; The Museum of Whatnot; Worst-Case Scenario - all these stories have one thing in common. They are all weirdly wonderful, written with an ingeniously twisted wittiness that kept me turning page after page.
Pub Date: 01 Sept 2020
Many thanks for the ARC provided by HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco
To give you a taste, this is what he has to say about writing short stories in the Introduction:
”But short stories, for me, are like stealing a car, driving it as fast as you can, and crashing it into a tree, knowing you were always going to do that very thing. And then you crawl out of the car, which is now mangled and smoking, and you realize that you aren’t dead, that you’re still alive. And you look at the car, and it’s beautiful. And you walk away.”
Grand Stand-In is the first story in this collection, a story about a woman who plays a substitute grandmother to families who are trying to fill a hole in their family, either due to a loss, or they’d prefer a substitute to the real thing, someone more grandmotherly.
Blowing Up on the Spot is about a man named Leonard who works in a Scrabble factory, and has a brother who is suicidal, while at the same time trying to pursue a romance with the girl who works in the candy shop. Oh, yes, and he’s also concerned about spontaneously combusting since this is how his parents died.
Birds in the House was strange (of course) and wonderful. A story about a family, and the four men in this family, one will inherit the estate, a somewhat no-longer-in-its-prime antebellum home along with various stocks and bonds. The grandson, a teenager, must observe the contest – the folding of 1,000 cranes, 250 for each one, which will be each marked by the folder to distinguish each brother’s collection from another’s, and then all will be placed on the table. A thousand cranes that signify happiness and a long life for those who make them in the Japanese culture, where their mother was from. The mother / grandmother’s wish, in the hopes that this would somehow bring them back together, and that they would reconcile their grievances. The decision being made by which crane is left after all is said and done.
The remaining stories: Mortal Kombat; Tunneling to the Center of the Earth; The Shooting Man; The Choir Director Affair; Go, Fight, Win; The Museum of Whatnot; Worst-Case Scenario - all these stories have one thing in common. They are all weirdly wonderful, written with an ingeniously twisted wittiness that kept me turning page after page.
Pub Date: 01 Sept 2020
Many thanks for the ARC provided by HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco
May 27, 2022
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth stretched the bounds of my imagination in startling ways. It is a collection of eleven boldly wacky stories of people in strange situations that are remotely familiar and yet wildly absurd. I found myself on a far-out planet, incredulity mounting, realizing the need to suspend disbelief, and surrendering to all that is bizarre and wonderful.
Stories are spun about:
1. a company that provides stand-in grandmothers for families that think theirs aren’t cool enough and need to be replaced,
2. individuals who spontaneously combust while riding the subway,
3. a manual to cope with a dead sister,
4. folding paper cranes, Japanese style, to contest a will,
5. unpopular teenage boys ‘devouring’ each other,
6. youths digging a tunnel through the earth to bury their unhappiness,
7. a performer who shoots himself in the face and lives to repeat it show after show,
8. a baby born with a full set of teeth,
9. cheerleading as a panacea for a teenage social pariah,
10. a museum for ordinary junk (e.g., a lifetime collection of nail clippings!),
11. getting a university degree in Catastrophe and landing a job in Worst-Case Scenario, Inc.
The stories are much more than these cryptic one-liners. To say more would spoil the fun for other readers. It seems to me that at the heart of these inventive scenarios are folks who are inherently lonely and seeking someone to love. Wilson approaches this with a light and sometimes almost imperceptible touch. The overriding sense is one of surprise and I looked forward to each story, waiting to be shocked and pleasantly teased.
Published in 2009, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth won the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award. The latter is an award for ‘outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic.’
This is my introduction to Kevin Wilson’s writing. What a trip it has been tunneling to the center of the earth! Highly recommended.
Stories are spun about:
1. a company that provides stand-in grandmothers for families that think theirs aren’t cool enough and need to be replaced,
2. individuals who spontaneously combust while riding the subway,
3. a manual to cope with a dead sister,
4. folding paper cranes, Japanese style, to contest a will,
5. unpopular teenage boys ‘devouring’ each other,
6. youths digging a tunnel through the earth to bury their unhappiness,
7. a performer who shoots himself in the face and lives to repeat it show after show,
8. a baby born with a full set of teeth,
9. cheerleading as a panacea for a teenage social pariah,
10. a museum for ordinary junk (e.g., a lifetime collection of nail clippings!),
11. getting a university degree in Catastrophe and landing a job in Worst-Case Scenario, Inc.
The stories are much more than these cryptic one-liners. To say more would spoil the fun for other readers. It seems to me that at the heart of these inventive scenarios are folks who are inherently lonely and seeking someone to love. Wilson approaches this with a light and sometimes almost imperceptible touch. The overriding sense is one of surprise and I looked forward to each story, waiting to be shocked and pleasantly teased.
Published in 2009, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth won the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award. The latter is an award for ‘outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic.’
This is my introduction to Kevin Wilson’s writing. What a trip it has been tunneling to the center of the earth! Highly recommended.
June 27, 2020
I have read two novels by Kevin Wilson and was just OK with Nothing to See Here (2019) (3 stars) and not at all OK with The Family Fang (2011) (1 star). I remember when reviewing The Family Fang that somebody on GR said that his short story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, was much better, or at least that is what I recall. So I put it on my TBR list.
What a pleasant surprise! 😊
There were 12 stories in this collection and I did not start with the first one…for some reason I picked out ones farther into the book. In brief, some of the plot lines I thought were extremely clever….and they were accompanied by extremely engaging writing. In some of my reviews of other books, I have said that the premise was really clever but the book sucked…not so here. Well done, Kevin Wilson, well done. Very solid 4 stars.
Here are the ones that I really liked (5 stars) and I’ll limit my synopsis to one or two sentences (not a long-winded review…).
• Worst-Case Scenario: Man has a job in which he tells clients the many different things that could happen to them or to their family members or to their company, worst case scenario. (Which is probably not so good, you know?)
• Grand Stand-In: Older female works at a job where she acts as if she is a grandmother to children who don’t remember their real grandmother is dead (but the parents want their kids to grow up having a grandmother who is ALIVE, and hence she stands in for their granny who has kicked the bucket).
• The Museum of What-Not: A lonely young women works for a museum that has displays of “things that are ordinarily junk but not junk because someone, somewhere, made it more than that by collecting, hoarding, and preserving it” (e.g., mason jars of baby teeth, collection of worthless spoons, 573 labels of canned apricots). A very poignant love story of sorts. NOTE: I gave this one 5+++ stars. 😎
• Go, fight, win: A lonely high school cheerleader who does not fit in befriends a 12 year old boy who is a misfit. Another poignant story.
• The Shooting Man: A man has a girlfriend and really wants her to go with him to a carnival in which there is a show in which a man picks up a revolver and blows his brains out, and is able to repeat this act on subsequent nights. (How does he do it?!!! 😲 ) The man loses his girlfriend because she is so traumatized by watching it – that’s not the only thing he loses. 😐
I gave 4 other stories (Blowing Up on the Spot; Birds in the House; Tunneling to the Center of the Earth; The Choir Director) 4 stars….so that’s pretty darn good in my book.
It’s interesting to note that 'Blowing Up On the Spot' involved a mother and father of two boys who underwent spontaneous combustion (one reads about these things in the National Enquirer) so he must have a thing for people who catch on fire since he returned to that theme with his 2019 novel, Nothing to See Here.
Reviews:
https://www.apr.org/post/tunneling-ce...
https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v9n1/nonfic...
What a pleasant surprise! 😊
There were 12 stories in this collection and I did not start with the first one…for some reason I picked out ones farther into the book. In brief, some of the plot lines I thought were extremely clever….and they were accompanied by extremely engaging writing. In some of my reviews of other books, I have said that the premise was really clever but the book sucked…not so here. Well done, Kevin Wilson, well done. Very solid 4 stars.
Here are the ones that I really liked (5 stars) and I’ll limit my synopsis to one or two sentences (not a long-winded review…).
• Worst-Case Scenario: Man has a job in which he tells clients the many different things that could happen to them or to their family members or to their company, worst case scenario. (Which is probably not so good, you know?)
• Grand Stand-In: Older female works at a job where she acts as if she is a grandmother to children who don’t remember their real grandmother is dead (but the parents want their kids to grow up having a grandmother who is ALIVE, and hence she stands in for their granny who has kicked the bucket).
• The Museum of What-Not: A lonely young women works for a museum that has displays of “things that are ordinarily junk but not junk because someone, somewhere, made it more than that by collecting, hoarding, and preserving it” (e.g., mason jars of baby teeth, collection of worthless spoons, 573 labels of canned apricots). A very poignant love story of sorts. NOTE: I gave this one 5+++ stars. 😎
• Go, fight, win: A lonely high school cheerleader who does not fit in befriends a 12 year old boy who is a misfit. Another poignant story.
• The Shooting Man: A man has a girlfriend and really wants her to go with him to a carnival in which there is a show in which a man picks up a revolver and blows his brains out, and is able to repeat this act on subsequent nights. (How does he do it?!!! 😲 ) The man loses his girlfriend because she is so traumatized by watching it – that’s not the only thing he loses. 😐
I gave 4 other stories (Blowing Up on the Spot; Birds in the House; Tunneling to the Center of the Earth; The Choir Director) 4 stars….so that’s pretty darn good in my book.
It’s interesting to note that 'Blowing Up On the Spot' involved a mother and father of two boys who underwent spontaneous combustion (one reads about these things in the National Enquirer) so he must have a thing for people who catch on fire since he returned to that theme with his 2019 novel, Nothing to See Here.
Reviews:
https://www.apr.org/post/tunneling-ce...
https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v9n1/nonfic...
October 5, 2021
“Don't you see? The things we once loved do not change, only our belief in them. . . You are left with the only things that any of us have in the end. The things we keep inside of ourselves, that grow out of us, that tell us who we are.”
I read and really liked Kevin Wilson's Nothing to See Here (2019), about a woman who works as a nanny for two kids that burst into flames when they get upset. They recover, each time, but more importantly, the nanny, who is kind of lost in her early thirties, finds purpose in her life
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth was published ten years earlier, a collection of stories, and they have in common with the later novel all sorts of body horror and black humor and surrealism, though the stories are always grounded in humanity, in empathy.
My favorite stories include the title story, about three stoner college grads with "useless" degrees (with respect to jobs) such as Gender Studies, Art History or Morse Code (?!) who (kinda) decide to dig to the center of the Earth. They are lost, the idea is funny (almost all of the frames for the story are weirdly hilarious), but the resolution (as it often is) is touching, as the three slackers go on with their lives, and turn to archaeology, landscaping, things related to digging. Bizarrely sweet!
"Grand Stand-In" is about a widow working as "stand-in" grandma for several families. The kids don't know the difference; some families actually have grandmas but they are unlikable; some are far away. Touching, too, finally.
"Blowing Up on the Spot": A couple of boys struggle to survive after their parents spontaneously combusted. (A precursor to Nothing to See Here?)
"The Museum of What-Not" is the story of lonely thirty-something woman who works in a museum with what she generally thinks of as junk. A much older doctor whose family donated some spoons there comes in regularly and then falls for her, and helps her in her work, reconceptualizing the work of curation. A kind of love story.
“The Shooting Man” just might have been my favorite, as it made me cry with laughter: : A guy’s friend tells him about a show at the carnival he saw, where a man shoots himself in the face. This is bizarre and violent and disturbing, I know, but I thought from the guy’s perspective it reveals something about crazy American male culture (like wanting to see MMA and shark tank death matches and things like that). The guy’s girlfriend has NO interest whatsoever in seeing this, but he finally wears her down and predictably, she is disturbed by it. All the guys want to know how the guy does it. Of course she (like all of rational readers) wants nothing to do with any of this. As the man tries to repair the damage and get a signed ticket stub for the girl (clueless of him to think she would even want this), things turn a little sinister. Not so much touching as great social satire and you almost feel sorry for the guy.
Imaginative, humorous premises throughout. Some of it I have to call horror because of the body horror and strangeness and magical realism/surrealism, so happy Halloween month.
I read and really liked Kevin Wilson's Nothing to See Here (2019), about a woman who works as a nanny for two kids that burst into flames when they get upset. They recover, each time, but more importantly, the nanny, who is kind of lost in her early thirties, finds purpose in her life
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth was published ten years earlier, a collection of stories, and they have in common with the later novel all sorts of body horror and black humor and surrealism, though the stories are always grounded in humanity, in empathy.
My favorite stories include the title story, about three stoner college grads with "useless" degrees (with respect to jobs) such as Gender Studies, Art History or Morse Code (?!) who (kinda) decide to dig to the center of the Earth. They are lost, the idea is funny (almost all of the frames for the story are weirdly hilarious), but the resolution (as it often is) is touching, as the three slackers go on with their lives, and turn to archaeology, landscaping, things related to digging. Bizarrely sweet!
"Grand Stand-In" is about a widow working as "stand-in" grandma for several families. The kids don't know the difference; some families actually have grandmas but they are unlikable; some are far away. Touching, too, finally.
"Blowing Up on the Spot": A couple of boys struggle to survive after their parents spontaneously combusted. (A precursor to Nothing to See Here?)
"The Museum of What-Not" is the story of lonely thirty-something woman who works in a museum with what she generally thinks of as junk. A much older doctor whose family donated some spoons there comes in regularly and then falls for her, and helps her in her work, reconceptualizing the work of curation. A kind of love story.
“The Shooting Man” just might have been my favorite, as it made me cry with laughter: : A guy’s friend tells him about a show at the carnival he saw, where a man shoots himself in the face. This is bizarre and violent and disturbing, I know, but I thought from the guy’s perspective it reveals something about crazy American male culture (like wanting to see MMA and shark tank death matches and things like that). The guy’s girlfriend has NO interest whatsoever in seeing this, but he finally wears her down and predictably, she is disturbed by it. All the guys want to know how the guy does it. Of course she (like all of rational readers) wants nothing to do with any of this. As the man tries to repair the damage and get a signed ticket stub for the girl (clueless of him to think she would even want this), things turn a little sinister. Not so much touching as great social satire and you almost feel sorry for the guy.
Imaginative, humorous premises throughout. Some of it I have to call horror because of the body horror and strangeness and magical realism/surrealism, so happy Halloween month.
August 28, 2021
| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | |
4 ½ stars
A very Wilsonesque collection of stories: dysfunctional families, spontaneous human combustion, surreal scenarios, and plenty of eccentric characters. Each story in this collection held my attention, and while they share similarities, they also showcase Wilson's range: from lighthearted tales (such as “Grand Stand-In” and “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth”) to more bittersweet stories (such as “Birds in the House”) and even ones that I can best describe as heartbreaking (“Mortal Kombat”).
Regardless of their tone, each story is permeated by surrealism. At times the surreal elements are overt (such as with the first story in this collection), while in other times they are more covert. Ordinary moments or exchanges are injected with a dose of the bizarre, and this weirdness was a delight to read. Wilson vividly renders his characters and their experiences (however unreal they were), and his mumblecore dialogues always rang true to life (even when the discussions veered in seemingly absurd territories).
This was a wonderful collection of short stories. They were extremely amusing and always surprising. Each story had a certain focus, and didn't meander in other directions, seeming committed to expanding on specific feelings or ideas. My favourite ones were “Mortal Kombat” (as sad as it was), “Birds in the House”, and “The Museum of Whatnot”.
Funny, original, and tender, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is a marvellous collection of stories, one that I would thoroughly recommend it to readers who enjoyed other works by Wilson, such as Nothing to See Here.
4 ½ stars
A very Wilsonesque collection of stories: dysfunctional families, spontaneous human combustion, surreal scenarios, and plenty of eccentric characters. Each story in this collection held my attention, and while they share similarities, they also showcase Wilson's range: from lighthearted tales (such as “Grand Stand-In” and “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth”) to more bittersweet stories (such as “Birds in the House”) and even ones that I can best describe as heartbreaking (“Mortal Kombat”).
Regardless of their tone, each story is permeated by surrealism. At times the surreal elements are overt (such as with the first story in this collection), while in other times they are more covert. Ordinary moments or exchanges are injected with a dose of the bizarre, and this weirdness was a delight to read. Wilson vividly renders his characters and their experiences (however unreal they were), and his mumblecore dialogues always rang true to life (even when the discussions veered in seemingly absurd territories).
This was a wonderful collection of short stories. They were extremely amusing and always surprising. Each story had a certain focus, and didn't meander in other directions, seeming committed to expanding on specific feelings or ideas. My favourite ones were “Mortal Kombat” (as sad as it was), “Birds in the House”, and “The Museum of Whatnot”.
Funny, original, and tender, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is a marvellous collection of stories, one that I would thoroughly recommend it to readers who enjoyed other works by Wilson, such as Nothing to See Here.
February 25, 2020
Reading these stories makes me see the world from a fresh and off-kilter perspective. Wilson writes about everyday people in extraordinary situations - a rent-a-grandma, young adults digging and living in tunnels, a curator in a museum of ordinary objects and more. Each story is remarkable. I also loved that at the end of the collection, he describes the literary inspiration for each of his stories.
February 5, 2021
Review Published on Blog: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend...
Wonderful, Weird, and Beautifully Hypnotic.
There are very few times when short stories capture my attention. Often when reading a short story collection, I feel like I am “missing” something. That quintessential piece of the puzzle or the ending that completes the story. With “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” however, that didn’t happen. Instead, I was left feeling mesmerized by the masterful stories created by Kevin Wilson, in much the same way that I was with “Nothing to See Here” the first novel that I read by him which I adored with my whole heart. This collection is bright, clever, entertaining, and extremely unique.
My favorites include:
“Grand Stand-In” (My favorite short story by far) - Endearing and Heartfelt! Here, a woman becomes a substitute grandmother for families in need. Whether it be because of loss, or illness, the families request a replacement grandmother, and presto! Bonds are formed, much more easily than you’d imagine with several different families as the “Grand Stand-In” is simply delightful. Kind, caring, quite funny, giving, and warm. Can I just say that I’d love to make a request?! (Pretty please with sugar on top?).
“Go Fight Win” - Perfection, Pure and Simple! Penny is a High School Cheerleader who does her best to fit in at her mother’s request, though she personally hates being a cheerleader. Her spare time is spent building model cars, which is the only thing that brings her happiness until she meets her next-door neighbor, who shares the same hobby. Despite their age difference, a friendship is formed. Just call me enchanted.
“Blowing up on the Spot” - A story of brothers, orphans, if you must know. Their parents spontaneously combusted on a train a few years prior. Their deaths cannot be explained. The eldest brother works in a factory day after day gathering scrabble tiles (the letter Q in case you’re wondering) in order to support his younger brother who is a very troubled, yet gifted swimmer. Devotion is the key here and it is a heartbreaker.
“Birds in the House” - Oddly Wonderful and Captivating all at the same time. A story about family, sibling rivalry, and well, birds. Lots of birds: paper cranes to be exact. When an estate is at stake everything runs amok. Here, four brothers compete in a contest to create 250 paper cranes each, in order to determine who will be the winner of a once-grand estate.
And for the short story that made me laugh while I was trying to wind down “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” and the parents who questioned their son’s action with “Do you think it’s the marijuana that’s making you do this?” - all I can say is, that was something!
Kevin Wilson’s collection is brilliant, clever, and oh so imaginative. Each story captured my attention in a different way. Furthermore, the narrators included here are nothing short of dazzling. While I preferred Kevin Wilson’s novel “Nothing to See Here” (simply because I loved the characters), I truly enjoyed this short story collection and highly recommend it. For those who enjoy audiobooks, I would grab it as it is absolutely phenomenal.
I must thank my Goodreads friends Cheri and Debbie for recommending this to me. The two of you were right - I loved this and several of the stories did in fact make me laugh out loud. Thank you both!
Thank you also to Kevin Wilson and all of the narrators who lent their voices to this incredible collection.
Review published on Goodreads and excerpt on Insta.
Wonderful, Weird, and Beautifully Hypnotic.
There are very few times when short stories capture my attention. Often when reading a short story collection, I feel like I am “missing” something. That quintessential piece of the puzzle or the ending that completes the story. With “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” however, that didn’t happen. Instead, I was left feeling mesmerized by the masterful stories created by Kevin Wilson, in much the same way that I was with “Nothing to See Here” the first novel that I read by him which I adored with my whole heart. This collection is bright, clever, entertaining, and extremely unique.
My favorites include:
“Grand Stand-In” (My favorite short story by far) - Endearing and Heartfelt! Here, a woman becomes a substitute grandmother for families in need. Whether it be because of loss, or illness, the families request a replacement grandmother, and presto! Bonds are formed, much more easily than you’d imagine with several different families as the “Grand Stand-In” is simply delightful. Kind, caring, quite funny, giving, and warm. Can I just say that I’d love to make a request?! (Pretty please with sugar on top?).
“Go Fight Win” - Perfection, Pure and Simple! Penny is a High School Cheerleader who does her best to fit in at her mother’s request, though she personally hates being a cheerleader. Her spare time is spent building model cars, which is the only thing that brings her happiness until she meets her next-door neighbor, who shares the same hobby. Despite their age difference, a friendship is formed. Just call me enchanted.
“Blowing up on the Spot” - A story of brothers, orphans, if you must know. Their parents spontaneously combusted on a train a few years prior. Their deaths cannot be explained. The eldest brother works in a factory day after day gathering scrabble tiles (the letter Q in case you’re wondering) in order to support his younger brother who is a very troubled, yet gifted swimmer. Devotion is the key here and it is a heartbreaker.
“Birds in the House” - Oddly Wonderful and Captivating all at the same time. A story about family, sibling rivalry, and well, birds. Lots of birds: paper cranes to be exact. When an estate is at stake everything runs amok. Here, four brothers compete in a contest to create 250 paper cranes each, in order to determine who will be the winner of a once-grand estate.
And for the short story that made me laugh while I was trying to wind down “Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” and the parents who questioned their son’s action with “Do you think it’s the marijuana that’s making you do this?” - all I can say is, that was something!
Kevin Wilson’s collection is brilliant, clever, and oh so imaginative. Each story captured my attention in a different way. Furthermore, the narrators included here are nothing short of dazzling. While I preferred Kevin Wilson’s novel “Nothing to See Here” (simply because I loved the characters), I truly enjoyed this short story collection and highly recommend it. For those who enjoy audiobooks, I would grab it as it is absolutely phenomenal.
I must thank my Goodreads friends Cheri and Debbie for recommending this to me. The two of you were right - I loved this and several of the stories did in fact make me laugh out loud. Thank you both!
Thank you also to Kevin Wilson and all of the narrators who lent their voices to this incredible collection.
Review published on Goodreads and excerpt on Insta.
April 22, 2010
After I read the first entry in this remarkable collection-----which, incidentally, concerns the moral and emotional conflicts of a professional rent-a-grandma------I put the book down. Only one story a night, Terry. Pace yourself, man. This is too good to read all at once.
It really is. Wilson has a remarkable ability to get us into the heads of everyday people in surreal situations. A guy who works in a scrabble-piece factory, terrified that he will spontaneously combust, as his parents did. Half-Japanese rednecks in middle Tennessee whose late mother decreed in her will that inheritance of the plantation would be determined by an origami bird contest. A man who discovers the terrible truth behind a carnival act in which the performer appears to blow out his brains. A consultant who, for a fee, provides anxious families with computer-generated projections for potential household tragedies. No matter how facially absurd the protagonist’s circumstances, Wilson sucks us right in to an entirely believable universe.
These stories are hysterically funny, often sad, and deeply humane. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
One story at a time.
It really is. Wilson has a remarkable ability to get us into the heads of everyday people in surreal situations. A guy who works in a scrabble-piece factory, terrified that he will spontaneously combust, as his parents did. Half-Japanese rednecks in middle Tennessee whose late mother decreed in her will that inheritance of the plantation would be determined by an origami bird contest. A man who discovers the terrible truth behind a carnival act in which the performer appears to blow out his brains. A consultant who, for a fee, provides anxious families with computer-generated projections for potential household tragedies. No matter how facially absurd the protagonist’s circumstances, Wilson sucks us right in to an entirely believable universe.
These stories are hysterically funny, often sad, and deeply humane. Do yourself a favor and read this book.
One story at a time.
August 7, 2020
After Kevin Wilson's most recent novel NOTHING TO SEE HERE worked its peculiar charms on me, I found myself thinking, oh my god, where did this Kevin Wilson person come from? And now I know. Here he is, shining forth in his first collection, published in 2009 and soon to be republished by Ecco in September 2020. Or maybe I should say, "bursting forth" or even "exploding forth," because there is a story here even in this first collection, a decade before Nothing to See Here, that has people spontaneously combusting in it. Unlike in Wilson's recent novel, the combusting people blow up without any warning flames flaming up beforehand. They just go boom, in the story “Blowing Up on the Spot." There are other body horrors in the other stories, and these are just as charming, and I really do mean "charming," because the explosive transformations that happen to Wilson's characters always seem a little on the light-hearted side even when they end in death.
It's hard to say what I would have thought about these stories without coming to them back through time, via Nothing to See Here. I can't imagine it because the novel had a big impact on me. But as 'origin stories' of Wilson's proclivities, hangups, and obsessions, I loved these stories.
It's hard to say what I would have thought about these stories without coming to them back through time, via Nothing to See Here. I can't imagine it because the novel had a big impact on me. But as 'origin stories' of Wilson's proclivities, hangups, and obsessions, I loved these stories.
September 21, 2020
After reading such high praise for these stories, I am so disappointed. While edgy, they struck me as a bit cruel and pointless.
At least, the book galvanized me to return to the brick and mortar library, which I have been avoiding since the pandemic started. I prefer actually reading some pages of books before borrowing them as well as gazing at a wide selection of them.
While at the library, I came across 5 copies of "Tunneling...," the book that I had just paid $15 for. Their glistening covers seemed to be mocking me. What can I say?
At least, the book galvanized me to return to the brick and mortar library, which I have been avoiding since the pandemic started. I prefer actually reading some pages of books before borrowing them as well as gazing at a wide selection of them.
While at the library, I came across 5 copies of "Tunneling...," the book that I had just paid $15 for. Their glistening covers seemed to be mocking me. What can I say?
June 5, 2020
Stories of amazing versatility and originality. One reviewer said he chose to read one story a day so they would last longer and he could savor each. I agree except that I had to gobble them up, they were that tasty. He incorporates some of his favorite themes such as self immolation and performance art, further explored in his longer works.
June 8, 2020
I loved Nothing to See Here and I love this collection of stories with some that precurse that novel. What do I love most? The imagination. The humor. Kevin Wilson feels like a cousin from another mother. I've never written stories like this, but he makes me want to.
(Thanks, Cheri.)
(Thanks, Cheri.)
July 8, 2022
1st half a lot stronger than the second half. Fave stories: grand stand-in & the museum of whatnot
June 16, 2019
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories by Kevin Wilson is full of weird, interesting stories. Even if I didn’t like them or find them satisfying, they are all well-written and interesting.
I am not an enthusiastic reader of short stories and read them despite my initial reaction of “short stories, meh.” This may have something to do with my educational experience of being force fed short stories, both in high school English classes and later in college as an English major. Over the years, I’ve become much more open to reading them and actually love (and will reread) very specific collections and authors. I don’t think Kevin Wilson will ever rise to that level. I enjoyed many of his stories on an intellectual level and appreciated how well he can turn a phrase, but the characters never really touched me emotionally. I found them too distant, even if I identified with their feelings/problems/situations.
Wilson’s stories are just a touch off. His world is recognizable but with just a slight twist of the bizarre. The first story, “The Grand Stand-in,” is about a business that rents out older people as grandparents to families that don’t, for whatever reason, have their own. The story is told from the point of view of a rent-a-grandma who actually does not have children or grandchildren of her own, but likes the job:
All of the stories in Tunneling to the Center of the Earth are interesting and complex. Although I didn’t find them as emotionally satisfying as the stories of Jhumpa Lahiri, Sherman Alexie, Helen Ellis, and Lucia Berlin (and others), I enjoyed them and look forward to reading Wilson’s novel The Family Fang.
I am not an enthusiastic reader of short stories and read them despite my initial reaction of “short stories, meh.” This may have something to do with my educational experience of being force fed short stories, both in high school English classes and later in college as an English major. Over the years, I’ve become much more open to reading them and actually love (and will reread) very specific collections and authors. I don’t think Kevin Wilson will ever rise to that level. I enjoyed many of his stories on an intellectual level and appreciated how well he can turn a phrase, but the characters never really touched me emotionally. I found them too distant, even if I identified with their feelings/problems/situations.
Wilson’s stories are just a touch off. His world is recognizable but with just a slight twist of the bizarre. The first story, “The Grand Stand-in,” is about a business that rents out older people as grandparents to families that don’t, for whatever reason, have their own. The story is told from the point of view of a rent-a-grandma who actually does not have children or grandchildren of her own, but likes the job:
It’s difficult work, but it’s fairly lucrative, nearly ten thousand a year, per family; and with Social Security going down the tubes, it’s nice to have spending money. But that can’t keep you interested. It’s hard to describe the feeling you get from opening your door, the inside of your house untouched by feet other than your own for so long, and finding a little boy or girl who is so excited to see you, has thought of little else for the past few days. You feel like a movie star, all the attention. They run into your arms and shout your name, though not your real name, and you are all that they care about (3).The second story is about a lonely young man, barely out of his teens, forced into being the caretaker for his younger troubled brother after his parents died suddenly. “Blowing Up On the Spot” is kind of depressing, even though I love the idea of the main character’s job as a Scrabble tile sorter. The letter tiles all descend in a loud clatter into a sorting area and employees aimlessly sift through thousands of the tiles looking for their assigned letter. It’s ridiculous and completely unbelievable, but I love the descriptions of the character’s job.
There are five large sorting rooms in the factory, each one filled with one hundred workers who sort through a mountain of wooden tiles, which fall in clumps from an overhead chute. At several times during the day, a large blue light flickers on and off, accompanied by a siren’s wail, and all the workers stop their sorting, pick themselves up off their hands and knees, and watch A’s and J’s and R’s fall all around them, making tic-tic sounds like a thousand typewriters going at once. I wade around in the alphabet, up to my knees, and search for Q’s. It is not a glamorous job (28).The stories have themes dealing with growing up and being faced with adult issues and how the characters deal with them. I also really liked “Birds in the House,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “The Choir Director Affair (The Baby’s Teeth).”
All of the stories in Tunneling to the Center of the Earth are interesting and complex. Although I didn’t find them as emotionally satisfying as the stories of Jhumpa Lahiri, Sherman Alexie, Helen Ellis, and Lucia Berlin (and others), I enjoyed them and look forward to reading Wilson’s novel The Family Fang.
May 21, 2022
I love Kevin Wilson's writing and this collection of short stories does an excellent job of showcasing his talent. Death as a subject is not an easy one to think about but Wilson broaches it with mysterious curiosity, an entertaining amount of darkness, and pure creativity. Great book!
May 20, 2016
Etgar Keret'i anımsatan birçok öykü var içinde. 1-2 tanesinden sıkıldım, bir yıldızı da oradan kırıyorum.
December 17, 2016
Her öykünün ayrı bir roman olmasını isterdim, o kadar güzeldi :")
September 25, 2023
A great collection of quirky stories. I immensely enjoyed reading this book.
My favorite stories include: Blowing Up on the Spot, Birds in the House, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, The Museum of Whatnot
Favorite Passages:
grand stand-in
You can be happy with your life and yet still see the point of one lived differently.
______
"We need somebody with good disconnect skills, so of course I immediately thought of you."
______
"I'll take it," I say. I have lots of love to give.
______
"For kind old ladies," she tells us, "we are such bitches."
_______
"So, basically," I say, still wondering if I can do this, "the Beamers are evil."
_______
"I just have to call one of my grandchildren," I say, "and convince him that I'm still alive."
_______
Before I walk into the room, I take all of my emotions that may cause problems during this session, all of my misgivings about the project, and get rid of them. I imagine placing them on an ice floe and pushing them out into the water, waving good-bye, though I am quite sure they won't be coming back. And when that is accomplished, when I am ready, I go meet these people that I supposedly love so much.
_______
"I didn't deserve to be killed," she says. "Nothing I possibly did was enough to deserve death."
_______
"Okay," he says, weary. "You're dead. I'll send out the notices tomorrow. Rest in peace."
blowing up on the spot
I count my steps because I have a boring and unhappy life.
_______
Thinking in sequence gives time meaning. It keeps me from exploding.
_______
I am a sorter at the Scrabble factory, the primary producer of Scrabble tiles for Hasbro Inc.
_______
I live in a small apartment above a confection stop. The shop is run by Hedy, an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair pinned up in a tight bun and kind features that seem as if she has never known anger.
_______
She holds up one of the chocolate turtles and lets me take a bite. Pecans, chocolate, and caramel mix together in my mouth and I taste Joan's fingerprints on my tongue.
_______
He has shaved his head and his eyebrows to swim faster at his next meet. When he stares at me with his pale blue eyes, stained red from the chlorine, he looks like a seal, like a newborn puppy.
_______
_______
_______
I wonder if spontaneous combustion is hereditary, if it can be passed down from generation to generation and lies waiting to make itself known. Perhaps it's like Huntington's disease, a fifty-fifty chance and you have to wait until you get older to find out. At work, I'll be sorting tiles and feel flush, red-cheeked, and my heart will stop, waiting to explode. Most nights I sit in bed for hours, lying perfectly still and waiting for a sound, like a pop, like an electrical spark or a fizz. Or I sit out on the fire escape and have waking dreams of shooting up into the air and exploding like a firework, spreading myself across the sky in multiple colors.
________
. . . by manipulating internal organs, people can generate explosive bursts of electrical energy from within their stomachs.
________
I think that perhaps this is what he wants, these small moments after he's tried, when the world around him is fuzzy and warm and slow.
________
And it does no good to think that it could have been better or worse or just the same as it is now. There are new things, good things, that I can see for the first time in a while. It makes me smile to finally understand this, that we have only the things we are given, and we must be thankful for them, the tiny, almost imperceptible feeling on our fingertips.
the dead sister handbook: a guide for sensitive boys
legacies (also known as The Dead Sistory)
The family tree of the dead sister is filled with unbranching limbs, categorized by several unusual, untimely deaths occurring exclusively to females. Your great-aunt broke her neck diving into a shallow pond and drowned. Your great-great-grandmother was sleepwalking through the woods beyond her house only seventeen days after the birth of your great-grandfather and was attacked and killed by a bear. Your aunt was smothered in her crib by the family cat before she was a month old. The generational duration of the Dead Sistory is unknown and, by most accounts, unceasing.
lightning, nearly struck by
In the days before death occurs, the heavy deposits of fate inside the dead sister's body serve as a conduit for the discharge of atmospheric electricity. In 27 percent of cases, the dead sister is actually struck by lightning, though never resulting in death.
look-alikes
Sensitive boys will encounter between four and eleven women who resemble the dead sister. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to talk to these women, follow them down crowded city streets, or pay them money in exchange for sexual favors. Nothing good can come from this.
loss of child
The sensitive boy secretly believes that his parents, if given the choice, would rather he had died instead of the dead sister. In 80 percent of cases, this is true.
birds in the house
"Show a little respect, jackass. Fold your son of a bitch birds and we can get this over with."
_______
When I bend over to pick up one of the cranes, my uncle Bit flicks my ear. This is the extent of our relationship. He flicks my ear at reunions, twenty, thirty times throughout the day. Sometimes, he'll hide behind trees, wait behind doors, until I come out and he'll flick my ear with a sharp thwack and run away, laughing to himself.
_______
"Fairies finish first, that's what I hear." Soo backs up, still coughing words away. Soo runs a near-bankrupt company that makes chocolate shaped like old comic characters, white chocolate Katzenjammer Kids, Li'l Abners made with crisped rice, a nougat-filled Barney Google. He has no money- people apparently don't want to eat beloved comic characters or else don't remember them. Now he spends a lot of time looking over his shoulder, as if a creditor is hiding behind a door.
_______
My father is now riding Mizell like a cowboy on a bucking bronc, digging his heels into Mizell's kidneys and screaming, "Get along little doggies." Soo has taken his belt off and cracks it like a bull whip across Bit's back. The lawyer stands in the frame of the door and twirls his watch, his eyes lit up like a man looking through a peephole.
Birds are everywhere, flying to certain death off the edge, hovering two feet over the table, or holding fast to the oak finish.
_______
And for one moment it is wonderful to watch this single paper crane hang in the air like a prayer, like hope, like a single breath.
mortal kombat
They do not fit correctly into the spaces available to them.
tunneling to the center of the earth
"It smells like a museum," she said, "like something from the past."
_______
One night, Hunter woke up thrashing in his sleeping bag rolling from side to side dangerously near the mouth of the hole. When we finally got him awake, he told us that he'd dug too far in his dream, had felt the earth give easily under his shovel and that fire had come out of the cracks, spilling around his feet.
"We can't keep digging down," he told us. "We'll find mole people or molten lava or some underground ocean."
_______
So we went sideways.
_______
Under the surface, the air was cool and slightly damp and we felt like we were moving through a haze, a dream world that held no possibility for pain or disaster.
_______
My mother gave us food weekly, dropped bags of groceries into the hole in the backyard, where one of us would go pick them up. "Here's your snacks honey," she would tell me as she dropped the groceries down the hole. I wore sunglasses to protect my eyes from the light that shined down on me. I was covered in dirt; it was under my fingernails and behind my ears. My mother was not pleased. "Honey, do you think that maybe it's all the marijuana that's making you do this?"
_______
There was something transforming about watching the earth change as you dug and then passing thorough it, feeling yourself changed in the process.
_______
Amy, the Gender Studies major, kept saying that there were Freudian theories based on these kinds of dreams but I really think that sometimes a tunnel was just a tunnel.
_______
We dug until we were tired and then we slept. With both of their bodies covering my own, I felt the breath enter and leave their bodies, their hearts beating. And if there's any chance of being happier than that - filthy, cold, and almost imperceptible from the ground we slept on - I would like to know how.
the shooting man
Sue-Bee did not want to see this show. She said it was sick to go watch someone do bad things to himself. I kept telling her that it wasn't real. I just wanted to see how real it was, how close he'd get to making me believe.
_______
BLOWING UP FISH IS WRONG!
FISH DESERVE BETTER!
_______
We put sound in things. My line puts the voice boxes in baby dolls, so all day long I hear the gurgled sounds of Chatty Cathy dolls. From seven to four, nothing but waa-waa and Baby wants a bottle.
_______
This shooting man was all anyone in town talked about. People had all kinds of ideas about him.They all seemed plausible at the time.
_______
I was beginning to understand that these were the things you denied yourself in the name of love, these wonderful happenings of an unfavorable nature.
the choir director affair (the baby's teeth)
There is guilt and lust and deceit and the things that stories are made of, the condition of our collective lives laid bare.
________
You feel like a real son of a bitch but why wouldn't someone have mentioned this beforehand? A small warning: this baby will smile and it will startle you.
________
The things we once loved do not change, only our belief in them.
go, fight, win
Penny thought how stupid team spirit was, how easy it was to kill.
________
"Say something now, cheer-bitches. Say something now."
________
"Well, they said you jumped off your house."
"I did."
"Why?"
"I wanted to try something out. It didn't work, but I kinda thought it wouldn't. I still wanted to try it though. I'm not that interested in flying anymore."
________
"I don't like what you think is good. I don't like cheerleading and school and other people."
the museum of whatnot
This is how my day starts: checking the newspaper hats for silverfish. Dusting the mason jars of baby teeth. Realigning the framed labels of apricot jars. My mother calls me every Friday to remind me about my body. "Janey, you're going to wake up one day, childless, and all you have are those . . . things." And probably she's right. Still, I tell her that I'd rather watch over other people's useless things than have to deal with my own. She hangs up after that.
I am thirty-one years old. I have a degree in Museum Science from Dartmouth. I keep to myself. I am the caretaker and sole employee of the Carl Jensen Museum of Whatnot. We, and by we, I mean me, call it the MOW. Se sell T-shirts but no one's buying.
The MOW is the only museum in the world dedicated solely to the acquisition and preservation of the everyday made unique. Things that are ordinarily junk but not junk because someone, somewhere, made it more than that by their collecting, hoarding, and preserving it.
________
Up to this point, all I knew were beaten paths, tattooed with footprints, and I had come to the understanding that they were not much fun to travel because so many people were waiting for you at the end, wondering what took you so long.
________
Here are the comment cards in the Suggestion Box for the month of April:
Weird.
This place is really weird.
A very curious place. I will recommend this to my friends.
Nice place but the art is really weird.
I am very disappointed. My stepdaughter cried when she saw the chicken bones exhibit.
Why am I supposed to care about these things? Tell me that.
Weird!
A snack bar would be nice.
Weird.
Get a fucking life.
________
I am a library patron, a renter without an option to buy, a Salvation Army donator, a spring cleaner of the highest order.
________
At the end of the alphabet is the suicide letter, framed in a simple metal rectangle. A little morbid, yes, but show me a museum that isn't.
________
"And what do you want, Mother?"
"You know darn well what I want. I want you to be happy and find someone and get married and have kids and be fulfilled. And I want you to do it before I get too old and start getting senile and can't enjoy it."
"You aren't giving me much time then."
"Get out of that museum," she says, almost shouting.
________
It makes me wonder if one's obsessions are like goldfish, growing only as large as the constraints will allow.
________
"Junk isn't a synonym for whatnot. A trifle, a curio, perhaps even a gewgaw, but it isn't junk." I corrected myself immediately. There was a pause before he asked, "You haven't been calling it junk to the visitors have you?" When I assured him that I used the correct terminology in front of museum visitors, he sighed and then said, "Because calling it junk could significantly lower someone's estimation of our knickknacks."
________
"Everything is junk at some point," he says. "Museums are filled with the junk of previous civilizations, right?"
________
There is a point where the things you take on begin to overflow and then, finally, become interesting. You live with it, walk around it, and the randomness of it all becomes part of you. There is, I see, something pleasing about allowing something, however trivial, to fill up your life, to stop and look around at the space you inhabit and say, "I want this."
worst-case scenario
I work for Worst-Case Scenario, Inc. I have a degree in Catastrophe from a small college in the Northeast, where I learned all the ways that things fall apart. I am a field agent in what could happen.
_______
Stella tells me that she wants to start a new company, called Look on the Bright Side, which will go to each business immediately after Worst-Case Scenario, Inc. and show them all the good things that could happen, all the perfect moments that they never dreamed possible.
_______
She tells me that she can't sleep anymore, that she has terrible dreams of computer-animated figures falling down steps and being crushed by garage doors.
_______
On one job at a sausage factory, the owner became irate when I gave him my results: the computer figure falling into the grinder unbeknownst to any around him, the figure's children eating the sausage a week later, unaware that their father is in it. "This will never happen, never," he said, disgusted. "I paid you good money and you're giving me spook stories, doomsday predictions."
_______
My favorite stories include: Blowing Up on the Spot, Birds in the House, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth, The Museum of Whatnot
Favorite Passages:
grand stand-in
You can be happy with your life and yet still see the point of one lived differently.
______
"We need somebody with good disconnect skills, so of course I immediately thought of you."
______
"I'll take it," I say. I have lots of love to give.
______
"For kind old ladies," she tells us, "we are such bitches."
_______
"So, basically," I say, still wondering if I can do this, "the Beamers are evil."
_______
"I just have to call one of my grandchildren," I say, "and convince him that I'm still alive."
_______
Before I walk into the room, I take all of my emotions that may cause problems during this session, all of my misgivings about the project, and get rid of them. I imagine placing them on an ice floe and pushing them out into the water, waving good-bye, though I am quite sure they won't be coming back. And when that is accomplished, when I am ready, I go meet these people that I supposedly love so much.
_______
"I didn't deserve to be killed," she says. "Nothing I possibly did was enough to deserve death."
_______
"Okay," he says, weary. "You're dead. I'll send out the notices tomorrow. Rest in peace."
blowing up on the spot
I count my steps because I have a boring and unhappy life.
_______
Thinking in sequence gives time meaning. It keeps me from exploding.
_______
I am a sorter at the Scrabble factory, the primary producer of Scrabble tiles for Hasbro Inc.
_______
I live in a small apartment above a confection stop. The shop is run by Hedy, an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair pinned up in a tight bun and kind features that seem as if she has never known anger.
_______
She holds up one of the chocolate turtles and lets me take a bite. Pecans, chocolate, and caramel mix together in my mouth and I taste Joan's fingerprints on my tongue.
_______
He has shaved his head and his eyebrows to swim faster at his next meet. When he stares at me with his pale blue eyes, stained red from the chlorine, he looks like a seal, like a newborn puppy.
_______
_______
_______
I wonder if spontaneous combustion is hereditary, if it can be passed down from generation to generation and lies waiting to make itself known. Perhaps it's like Huntington's disease, a fifty-fifty chance and you have to wait until you get older to find out. At work, I'll be sorting tiles and feel flush, red-cheeked, and my heart will stop, waiting to explode. Most nights I sit in bed for hours, lying perfectly still and waiting for a sound, like a pop, like an electrical spark or a fizz. Or I sit out on the fire escape and have waking dreams of shooting up into the air and exploding like a firework, spreading myself across the sky in multiple colors.
________
. . . by manipulating internal organs, people can generate explosive bursts of electrical energy from within their stomachs.
________
I think that perhaps this is what he wants, these small moments after he's tried, when the world around him is fuzzy and warm and slow.
________
And it does no good to think that it could have been better or worse or just the same as it is now. There are new things, good things, that I can see for the first time in a while. It makes me smile to finally understand this, that we have only the things we are given, and we must be thankful for them, the tiny, almost imperceptible feeling on our fingertips.
the dead sister handbook: a guide for sensitive boys
legacies (also known as The Dead Sistory)
The family tree of the dead sister is filled with unbranching limbs, categorized by several unusual, untimely deaths occurring exclusively to females. Your great-aunt broke her neck diving into a shallow pond and drowned. Your great-great-grandmother was sleepwalking through the woods beyond her house only seventeen days after the birth of your great-grandfather and was attacked and killed by a bear. Your aunt was smothered in her crib by the family cat before she was a month old. The generational duration of the Dead Sistory is unknown and, by most accounts, unceasing.
lightning, nearly struck by
In the days before death occurs, the heavy deposits of fate inside the dead sister's body serve as a conduit for the discharge of atmospheric electricity. In 27 percent of cases, the dead sister is actually struck by lightning, though never resulting in death.
look-alikes
Sensitive boys will encounter between four and eleven women who resemble the dead sister. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to talk to these women, follow them down crowded city streets, or pay them money in exchange for sexual favors. Nothing good can come from this.
loss of child
The sensitive boy secretly believes that his parents, if given the choice, would rather he had died instead of the dead sister. In 80 percent of cases, this is true.
birds in the house
"Show a little respect, jackass. Fold your son of a bitch birds and we can get this over with."
_______
When I bend over to pick up one of the cranes, my uncle Bit flicks my ear. This is the extent of our relationship. He flicks my ear at reunions, twenty, thirty times throughout the day. Sometimes, he'll hide behind trees, wait behind doors, until I come out and he'll flick my ear with a sharp thwack and run away, laughing to himself.
_______
"Fairies finish first, that's what I hear." Soo backs up, still coughing words away. Soo runs a near-bankrupt company that makes chocolate shaped like old comic characters, white chocolate Katzenjammer Kids, Li'l Abners made with crisped rice, a nougat-filled Barney Google. He has no money- people apparently don't want to eat beloved comic characters or else don't remember them. Now he spends a lot of time looking over his shoulder, as if a creditor is hiding behind a door.
_______
My father is now riding Mizell like a cowboy on a bucking bronc, digging his heels into Mizell's kidneys and screaming, "Get along little doggies." Soo has taken his belt off and cracks it like a bull whip across Bit's back. The lawyer stands in the frame of the door and twirls his watch, his eyes lit up like a man looking through a peephole.
Birds are everywhere, flying to certain death off the edge, hovering two feet over the table, or holding fast to the oak finish.
_______
And for one moment it is wonderful to watch this single paper crane hang in the air like a prayer, like hope, like a single breath.
mortal kombat
They do not fit correctly into the spaces available to them.
tunneling to the center of the earth
"It smells like a museum," she said, "like something from the past."
_______
One night, Hunter woke up thrashing in his sleeping bag rolling from side to side dangerously near the mouth of the hole. When we finally got him awake, he told us that he'd dug too far in his dream, had felt the earth give easily under his shovel and that fire had come out of the cracks, spilling around his feet.
"We can't keep digging down," he told us. "We'll find mole people or molten lava or some underground ocean."
_______
So we went sideways.
_______
Under the surface, the air was cool and slightly damp and we felt like we were moving through a haze, a dream world that held no possibility for pain or disaster.
_______
My mother gave us food weekly, dropped bags of groceries into the hole in the backyard, where one of us would go pick them up. "Here's your snacks honey," she would tell me as she dropped the groceries down the hole. I wore sunglasses to protect my eyes from the light that shined down on me. I was covered in dirt; it was under my fingernails and behind my ears. My mother was not pleased. "Honey, do you think that maybe it's all the marijuana that's making you do this?"
_______
There was something transforming about watching the earth change as you dug and then passing thorough it, feeling yourself changed in the process.
_______
Amy, the Gender Studies major, kept saying that there were Freudian theories based on these kinds of dreams but I really think that sometimes a tunnel was just a tunnel.
_______
We dug until we were tired and then we slept. With both of their bodies covering my own, I felt the breath enter and leave their bodies, their hearts beating. And if there's any chance of being happier than that - filthy, cold, and almost imperceptible from the ground we slept on - I would like to know how.
the shooting man
Sue-Bee did not want to see this show. She said it was sick to go watch someone do bad things to himself. I kept telling her that it wasn't real. I just wanted to see how real it was, how close he'd get to making me believe.
_______
BLOWING UP FISH IS WRONG!
FISH DESERVE BETTER!
_______
We put sound in things. My line puts the voice boxes in baby dolls, so all day long I hear the gurgled sounds of Chatty Cathy dolls. From seven to four, nothing but waa-waa and Baby wants a bottle.
_______
This shooting man was all anyone in town talked about. People had all kinds of ideas about him.They all seemed plausible at the time.
_______
I was beginning to understand that these were the things you denied yourself in the name of love, these wonderful happenings of an unfavorable nature.
the choir director affair (the baby's teeth)
There is guilt and lust and deceit and the things that stories are made of, the condition of our collective lives laid bare.
________
You feel like a real son of a bitch but why wouldn't someone have mentioned this beforehand? A small warning: this baby will smile and it will startle you.
________
The things we once loved do not change, only our belief in them.
go, fight, win
Penny thought how stupid team spirit was, how easy it was to kill.
________
"Say something now, cheer-bitches. Say something now."
________
"Well, they said you jumped off your house."
"I did."
"Why?"
"I wanted to try something out. It didn't work, but I kinda thought it wouldn't. I still wanted to try it though. I'm not that interested in flying anymore."
________
"I don't like what you think is good. I don't like cheerleading and school and other people."
the museum of whatnot
This is how my day starts: checking the newspaper hats for silverfish. Dusting the mason jars of baby teeth. Realigning the framed labels of apricot jars. My mother calls me every Friday to remind me about my body. "Janey, you're going to wake up one day, childless, and all you have are those . . . things." And probably she's right. Still, I tell her that I'd rather watch over other people's useless things than have to deal with my own. She hangs up after that.
I am thirty-one years old. I have a degree in Museum Science from Dartmouth. I keep to myself. I am the caretaker and sole employee of the Carl Jensen Museum of Whatnot. We, and by we, I mean me, call it the MOW. Se sell T-shirts but no one's buying.
The MOW is the only museum in the world dedicated solely to the acquisition and preservation of the everyday made unique. Things that are ordinarily junk but not junk because someone, somewhere, made it more than that by their collecting, hoarding, and preserving it.
________
Up to this point, all I knew were beaten paths, tattooed with footprints, and I had come to the understanding that they were not much fun to travel because so many people were waiting for you at the end, wondering what took you so long.
________
Here are the comment cards in the Suggestion Box for the month of April:
Weird.
This place is really weird.
A very curious place. I will recommend this to my friends.
Nice place but the art is really weird.
I am very disappointed. My stepdaughter cried when she saw the chicken bones exhibit.
Why am I supposed to care about these things? Tell me that.
Weird!
A snack bar would be nice.
Weird.
Get a fucking life.
________
I am a library patron, a renter without an option to buy, a Salvation Army donator, a spring cleaner of the highest order.
________
At the end of the alphabet is the suicide letter, framed in a simple metal rectangle. A little morbid, yes, but show me a museum that isn't.
________
"And what do you want, Mother?"
"You know darn well what I want. I want you to be happy and find someone and get married and have kids and be fulfilled. And I want you to do it before I get too old and start getting senile and can't enjoy it."
"You aren't giving me much time then."
"Get out of that museum," she says, almost shouting.
________
It makes me wonder if one's obsessions are like goldfish, growing only as large as the constraints will allow.
________
"Junk isn't a synonym for whatnot. A trifle, a curio, perhaps even a gewgaw, but it isn't junk." I corrected myself immediately. There was a pause before he asked, "You haven't been calling it junk to the visitors have you?" When I assured him that I used the correct terminology in front of museum visitors, he sighed and then said, "Because calling it junk could significantly lower someone's estimation of our knickknacks."
________
"Everything is junk at some point," he says. "Museums are filled with the junk of previous civilizations, right?"
________
There is a point where the things you take on begin to overflow and then, finally, become interesting. You live with it, walk around it, and the randomness of it all becomes part of you. There is, I see, something pleasing about allowing something, however trivial, to fill up your life, to stop and look around at the space you inhabit and say, "I want this."
worst-case scenario
I work for Worst-Case Scenario, Inc. I have a degree in Catastrophe from a small college in the Northeast, where I learned all the ways that things fall apart. I am a field agent in what could happen.
_______
Stella tells me that she wants to start a new company, called Look on the Bright Side, which will go to each business immediately after Worst-Case Scenario, Inc. and show them all the good things that could happen, all the perfect moments that they never dreamed possible.
_______
She tells me that she can't sleep anymore, that she has terrible dreams of computer-animated figures falling down steps and being crushed by garage doors.
_______
On one job at a sausage factory, the owner became irate when I gave him my results: the computer figure falling into the grinder unbeknownst to any around him, the figure's children eating the sausage a week later, unaware that their father is in it. "This will never happen, never," he said, disgusted. "I paid you good money and you're giving me spook stories, doomsday predictions."
_______
September 8, 2020
Kevin Wilson is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors ("Nothing to See Here" was my favorite novel of 2019). This short story collection is a homerun. Wilson's writing is sharp, quirky, and heartwarming. I truly enjoyed all the stories here. He knows how to blend humor with heart and also, mundane life with a touch of magical realism. The highlights of this collection include: "Mortal Kombat", "The Shooting Man", "Go, Fight, Win", and "The Museum of Whatnot". This book was originally released a decade ago and is being re-released with a new forward by Wilson. I'll read anything by this talented man, he's the real deal.
Thank you, Netgalley and Harper Collins for the digital ARC.
Thank you, Netgalley and Harper Collins for the digital ARC.
December 30, 2024
4.5 - Kevin Wilson has such a knack for taking these wild concepts and using them to tell very grounded stories about complex characters, messy families, interesting romances, and personal growth. I’ve previously only read novels from him, so I was interested to see what his short stories would be like. And long story short, I loved them. The only story I wasn’t crazy about was “Go, Fight, Win” which was unfortunately the longest in the collection.
I can’t wait to keep going with reading his backlist. And also read his new book that’s coming out in 2025!!
I can’t wait to keep going with reading his backlist. And also read his new book that’s coming out in 2025!!
July 20, 2009
Kevin Wilson’s Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories reads like the author read a whole lot of Flannery O’Connor while sitting alone at the lunch table in high school. I mean that in a good way.
The stories veer from the vaguely fantasy/sci-fi (“The Grand Stand-In”, about grandparents for hire in the near future) to the creepy (“The Shooting Man”) to the Zen-esque calm of outsiders who struggle with identity (the isolative curator of “The Museum of Whatnot”). Wilson tends to share the perspective of characters connected to the circumstances at hand but not entirely of them. For example, the boy in “Birds in the Home” watches as his fathers and uncles set their hand-folded paper cranes free to determine who inherits the family estate. The field agent of “Worst-Case Scenario” attempts to transcend the limits of his job, where he analyzes all the horrible things that can happen to people in their homes. And in the title essay a recent college grad (his degree in Morse Code) finds meaning, at least temporarily, by digging underneath his town with two friends. The collection (I’m not sure how the stories are arranged, chronologically or otherwise) started out ok and got better. The last three stories are the best. “Go, Fight, Win” addresses the tragic and sometimes beautiful relationship between a twelve year old pyromaniac and a reluctant high school cheerleader (she’d rather be building model cars). “The Museum of Whatnot” concerns a lonely caretaker of a largely irrelevant museum and her relationship with a doctor interested in the museum’s extensive spoon portfolio. The collection ends with “Worst-Case Scenario.” Extra credit for the most entertaining “about the author” I’ve ever read and an illuminating interview with Mr. Wilson tacked on after the last story.
Wilson, at his best, writes with sensitivity and hypnotic poise of (sometimes) weird people with wide eyes in what seems like an off-center South that probably doesn’t exist outside of these pages. That’s ok; the oversized baby teeth and soaring paper cranes and handbooks for the brothers of dead sisters glean commonalities from their oddity. Everyone has peculiar dreams. At his worst Wilson seems like he’s trying too hard to get an “A” in a creative writing class. He’s batting about 80-20 in the right ratio, however, so I can recommend this book without reservation. I wonder if he’s got a novel in him. I’d read it. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth might be an early step of a distinguished career. I wouldn’t be surprised.
The stories veer from the vaguely fantasy/sci-fi (“The Grand Stand-In”, about grandparents for hire in the near future) to the creepy (“The Shooting Man”) to the Zen-esque calm of outsiders who struggle with identity (the isolative curator of “The Museum of Whatnot”). Wilson tends to share the perspective of characters connected to the circumstances at hand but not entirely of them. For example, the boy in “Birds in the Home” watches as his fathers and uncles set their hand-folded paper cranes free to determine who inherits the family estate. The field agent of “Worst-Case Scenario” attempts to transcend the limits of his job, where he analyzes all the horrible things that can happen to people in their homes. And in the title essay a recent college grad (his degree in Morse Code) finds meaning, at least temporarily, by digging underneath his town with two friends. The collection (I’m not sure how the stories are arranged, chronologically or otherwise) started out ok and got better. The last three stories are the best. “Go, Fight, Win” addresses the tragic and sometimes beautiful relationship between a twelve year old pyromaniac and a reluctant high school cheerleader (she’d rather be building model cars). “The Museum of Whatnot” concerns a lonely caretaker of a largely irrelevant museum and her relationship with a doctor interested in the museum’s extensive spoon portfolio. The collection ends with “Worst-Case Scenario.” Extra credit for the most entertaining “about the author” I’ve ever read and an illuminating interview with Mr. Wilson tacked on after the last story.
Wilson, at his best, writes with sensitivity and hypnotic poise of (sometimes) weird people with wide eyes in what seems like an off-center South that probably doesn’t exist outside of these pages. That’s ok; the oversized baby teeth and soaring paper cranes and handbooks for the brothers of dead sisters glean commonalities from their oddity. Everyone has peculiar dreams. At his worst Wilson seems like he’s trying too hard to get an “A” in a creative writing class. He’s batting about 80-20 in the right ratio, however, so I can recommend this book without reservation. I wonder if he’s got a novel in him. I’d read it. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth might be an early step of a distinguished career. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Read
November 10, 2022The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
‘Wildly imaginative [and] warmly compassionate…[Wilson] creates an appealing voice for each first-person narrator he invents, and in third person, he is flat-out magisterial, with more than a hint of the magical.’
Booklist
‘The stories have a delicious and unpredictable black comic sensibility to them, often with complex emotions squirming towards expression underneath.’
SMH/Age
'With dark humour, wild inventiveness and an affecting understanding of where, in the human heart, it hurts, [Wilson] creates strange worlds that cast reflection on our own.’
Roaring Stories
‘The beauty of these stories is that the characters and plotlines linger in the memory, sometimes for their pure oddity, but more often because of the gentle humour and pathos infused into the writing. Here is a writer of exceptional skill with a fondness for the flaws and frailties of humanity.’
Good Reading
‘Kevin Wilson has an unmatched eye for the absurdity of human behaviour…It’s tender and hilarious and sweet.’
Blair Braverman
‘Wildly imaginative [and] warmly compassionate…[Wilson] creates an appealing voice for each first-person narrator he invents, and in third person, he is flat-out magisterial, with more than a hint of the magical.’
Booklist
‘The stories have a delicious and unpredictable black comic sensibility to them, often with complex emotions squirming towards expression underneath.’
SMH/Age
'With dark humour, wild inventiveness and an affecting understanding of where, in the human heart, it hurts, [Wilson] creates strange worlds that cast reflection on our own.’
Roaring Stories
‘The beauty of these stories is that the characters and plotlines linger in the memory, sometimes for their pure oddity, but more often because of the gentle humour and pathos infused into the writing. Here is a writer of exceptional skill with a fondness for the flaws and frailties of humanity.’
Good Reading
‘Kevin Wilson has an unmatched eye for the absurdity of human behaviour…It’s tender and hilarious and sweet.’
Blair Braverman
June 22, 2009
An excellent story collection that brings to mind the strange & compelling work of Elizabeth McCracken. These stories run the gamut of peculiar professions and misplaced oddballs: a professional "grandma" who makes memories on demand, a Scrabble factory worker who fears spontaneous combustion, a freak show regular who takes a bullet to the head every night, a cheerless cheerleader, a curator of banal objects and a balding worst-case scenario expert, among others. Simple prose and straight forward narration set off the bizarre situations, making them almost feel normal. Though none of their situations could be called typical, the emotions, longings and fears of these characters are all too familiar. A quietly humorous and gently melancholic compilation.
November 30, 2014
All his stories can be summed up in a sentence. His characters are always made to be lacking in some obvious, uncomplicated way - whether it's a baby with monstrous teeth, girl with no social connections, college grads who'd rather dig holes in the ground than think about their careers. This is a simple book full of very simple, short stories. The emotional wins at the end of every story, as a result, feel similarly simple. Rather than writing a character who is fully human, the author pokes some big holes in them, making their losses the most immediate and defining thing about them. He knows how to write stories, they are strange and heartfelt and finish often in a way that feels complete and satisfying. But these are not great, big, painful emotional stories. Effectively written, but real empathy was missing.
November 1, 2022
“Grand Stand-In”
⇝ 5 stars
“Blowing Up on the Spot” ⇝ 2 stars
“The Dead Sister Handbook: A Guide for Sensitive Boys” ⇝ 1 star
“Birds in the House” ⇝ 2 stars
“Mortal Kombat” ⇝ 1 star
“Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” ⇝ 3 stars
“The Shooting Man” ⇝ 3 stars
“The Choir Director Affair (The Baby’s Teeth)” ⇝ 4 stars
“Go, Fight, Win” ⇝ 3 stars
“The Museum of Whatnot” ⇝ 2 stars
“Worst-Case Scenario” ⇝ 2 stars
“Blowing Up on the Spot” ⇝ 2 stars
“The Dead Sister Handbook: A Guide for Sensitive Boys” ⇝ 1 star
“Birds in the House” ⇝ 2 stars
“Mortal Kombat” ⇝ 1 star
“Tunneling to the Center of the Earth” ⇝ 3 stars
“The Shooting Man” ⇝ 3 stars
“The Choir Director Affair (The Baby’s Teeth)” ⇝ 4 stars
“Go, Fight, Win” ⇝ 3 stars
“The Museum of Whatnot” ⇝ 2 stars
“Worst-Case Scenario” ⇝ 2 stars
June 28, 2021
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is a strange but thought-provoking set of short stories.
Average rating: 3.75 stars
“grand stand-in” - 4 stars
A fascinating look into love and families.
“blowing up on the spot” - 3.75 stars
“The dead sister handbook: a guide sensitive boys” - 3.5 stars
Interesting ‘found form’ work.
“birds in the house” - 4 stars
Interesting how it ends before what would have been the climax.
“mortal combat” - 4.5 stars
that hurts.
“tunneling to the center of the earth - 3.5 stars
I didn’t feel terribly invested in the outcome
“the shooting man” - 3.75
morbid, but fun.
“the choir director affair (the baby's teeth)” - 3.5 stars
“go, fight win” - 3.5 stars
Quiet even through the violence.
“the museum of whatnot” - 3.75 stars
Touching in a quiet way.
“worst-case scenario” - 3.5 stars
Sweet, in a pessimistic sort of way.
Average rating: 3.75 stars
“grand stand-in” - 4 stars
A fascinating look into love and families.
“blowing up on the spot” - 3.75 stars
“The dead sister handbook: a guide sensitive boys” - 3.5 stars
Interesting ‘found form’ work.
“birds in the house” - 4 stars
Interesting how it ends before what would have been the climax.
“mortal combat” - 4.5 stars
that hurts.
“tunneling to the center of the earth - 3.5 stars
I didn’t feel terribly invested in the outcome
“the shooting man” - 3.75
morbid, but fun.
“the choir director affair (the baby's teeth)” - 3.5 stars
“go, fight win” - 3.5 stars
Quiet even through the violence.
“the museum of whatnot” - 3.75 stars
Touching in a quiet way.
“worst-case scenario” - 3.5 stars
Sweet, in a pessimistic sort of way.
July 1, 2025
3.5 uneven reading experience, which is not uncommon with short stories. A few great ones, a bunch of not great ones. The first story is one of the best short stories I ever read, so it was worth reading just for that. Fun to see his trademarks in this collection. 5 stars for his ideas, 3 for execution
February 16, 2019
This is the book of stories I’ve been looking for—wild premises but still grounded in reality, full of funny moments not propped up by punchlines, and moving, heartfelt endings that try and almost always succeed in actually saying something honest about being human.
The book is at its best when the ridiculous and the disturbing are given free reign. It only touches on sentimentality in a few short moments (as can be expected with love stories, as most of these are), but it’s totally bearable since the rest of the moments are so true and enjoyable and weird.
Can’t wait to read more by Wilson.
The book is at its best when the ridiculous and the disturbing are given free reign. It only touches on sentimentality in a few short moments (as can be expected with love stories, as most of these are), but it’s totally bearable since the rest of the moments are so true and enjoyable and weird.
Can’t wait to read more by Wilson.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 670 reviews