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Splendid Anatomies
The very peculiar and human characters of Splendid Anatomies by Allison Wyss live in, on, and far beyond the periphery, learning to love themselves as they claim and reclaim their bodies. They get tattoos, have radical operations, wear prostheses, even dig bloody veins from their legs. They hack themselves to pieces. But then they stitch themselves back up--in ways that are both glorious and painful. These stories, set in the lands of fables, in other universes, and even the Midwest, are grotesque and gory, menacing and magical, sad, funny, and true celebrations of what it means to live.
PRAISE FOR SPLENDID ANATOMIES
In Splendid Anatomies, Allison Wyss examines the inherent strangeness of embodiment in all its forms, the different ways our physicality shapes who we are, and what we understand about ourselves and the world. The collection moves beyond genre to deliver tales that are by turns hilarious, disturbing, and poignant. A truly fascinating read.
—Emily Mitchell, author of The Last Summer of the World
With these fierce, slyly funny, and wondrous stories, Allison Wyss offers us a rich meditation on what it means to be in a body with its endlessly renewing cells and its strange, strange mystery. Splendid Anatomies is our world but deliciously tilted, and it contains a veritable menagerie of bodies—human, spider, bird, fish, even ghost. Each of these mesmerizing stories possesses its own splendid anatomy, reminding us with beautiful urgency that storytelling is how we feel our own existence.
--Maud Casey, author of City of Incurable Women
PRAISE FOR SPLENDID ANATOMIES
In Splendid Anatomies, Allison Wyss examines the inherent strangeness of embodiment in all its forms, the different ways our physicality shapes who we are, and what we understand about ourselves and the world. The collection moves beyond genre to deliver tales that are by turns hilarious, disturbing, and poignant. A truly fascinating read.
—Emily Mitchell, author of The Last Summer of the World
With these fierce, slyly funny, and wondrous stories, Allison Wyss offers us a rich meditation on what it means to be in a body with its endlessly renewing cells and its strange, strange mystery. Splendid Anatomies is our world but deliciously tilted, and it contains a veritable menagerie of bodies—human, spider, bird, fish, even ghost. Each of these mesmerizing stories possesses its own splendid anatomy, reminding us with beautiful urgency that storytelling is how we feel our own existence.
--Maud Casey, author of City of Incurable Women
- GenresShort StoriesHorror
191 pages, Paperback
Published March 1, 2022
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62 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 6, 2023
This is a quirky, diverse collection. Most of the blurbs (rightfully) mention the lovable misfits who people these stories, but barely touch on the author's self-professed obsession with the body and her kaleidoscopic ideas and inventive, open-ended treatments. I'll just mention the perfect nose in the first story, and the imaginary pregnancy in "Roar". Most of the stories have unpredictable arcs; the reconstructed fairy tales are often quickly twisted beyond recognition. I enjoyed the meta-fictional game of "The Seamstress and the Spider". "Snow White Alive" starts:
Some of the stories didn't work for me; I thought some of the really short ones were rather light. But overall an enjoyable collection.
When I took off my headphones and emerged from my home office, Snow White was passed out on the kitchen floor.
Some of the stories didn't work for me; I thought some of the really short ones were rather light. But overall an enjoyable collection.
April 16, 2022
My review in the Star Tribune: https://www.startribune.com/review-sp...
Fiction writer and Loft Literary Center instructor Allison Wyss' author bio explains that she "has a thing about body modification, dismemberment, and fairy tales." In her debut short story collection "Splendid Anatomies," Wyss gives these corporeal and narrative fixations nuance and complexity, examining the oddness of the fact that we are every single one of us a sophisticated consciousness walking around inside a container made of meat.
Filtered through an off-kilter sensibility, these 16 sometimes extremely brief short stories begin to make you laugh merely looking at the table of contents with such bawdy and embodied titles as "Nutsacks in Space" and "Boobman," and to make you think with "You're Perfect As You Are" and "Only Real Art Lasts Forever."
Wyss takes the familiar and plays up its inherent strangeness, whether it's the practice of plastic surgery — the labor required "to sell noses, as well as eye work, chin work, boob work" — or the tradition of a grandmother telling her granddaughter a disturbing tale called ending "The Seamstress and the Spider" with a "very awful" ending, or being a tattoo artist, "drawing over creases, veins, bones, wrinkles."
In "Vortex," she even defamiliarizes a commonplace restaurant where a busser named Joseph unwittingly opens a portal to another dimension by walking the wrong way through the in/out doors, allowing Wyss to point out that "Time, for what it's worth, was the fourth dimension in the world most commonly called 'reality.' "
Through her casual yet thoughtful incorporation of genre elements — be they sci-fi, fairy tales or horror — Wyss warps the reader's perception, offering an aptly absurd angle on everything from earthworms to bus stations to suspicious looking moles.
In "From the Multiverse Chronicles," she explores "the nature of friendship" by placing the two main characters in a world made of "plain yogurt, and nothing else, nothing at all," an oddly compelling move that's almost like a latter-day (and shorter) version of "The Woman in the Dunes."
And in "Curse the Toad," she flips the usual script and has her heroine wonder if the real jinx would be forcing a toad "to become a man."
So, too, does she play innovatively with forms, telling one story entirely as the "Final Journal Entry of Dr. Francis Longfellow Hendrix, Lead Scientist at Laboratory 78, Edited by A.L. White," a study of ghosts replete with erudite footnotes. Her flash fictions, including "Garden," "Sleep Birds" and "Fishing," show what intensity and depth of atmosphere can be created in just a few hundred carefully chosen words.
Wyss is also the co-founder of the Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop, which describes itself as being "for the tiny little weirdo inside you — the voice that insists on creating strange universes or imagining different worlds," offering courses that "nurture the iconoclast, help you knit your freak flag, and support you as you discover new ways of seeing — and of saying." Wyss's own bizarre and biting book gets weird and flies its freak flag in the best possible ways.
Fiction writer and Loft Literary Center instructor Allison Wyss' author bio explains that she "has a thing about body modification, dismemberment, and fairy tales." In her debut short story collection "Splendid Anatomies," Wyss gives these corporeal and narrative fixations nuance and complexity, examining the oddness of the fact that we are every single one of us a sophisticated consciousness walking around inside a container made of meat.
Filtered through an off-kilter sensibility, these 16 sometimes extremely brief short stories begin to make you laugh merely looking at the table of contents with such bawdy and embodied titles as "Nutsacks in Space" and "Boobman," and to make you think with "You're Perfect As You Are" and "Only Real Art Lasts Forever."
Wyss takes the familiar and plays up its inherent strangeness, whether it's the practice of plastic surgery — the labor required "to sell noses, as well as eye work, chin work, boob work" — or the tradition of a grandmother telling her granddaughter a disturbing tale called ending "The Seamstress and the Spider" with a "very awful" ending, or being a tattoo artist, "drawing over creases, veins, bones, wrinkles."
In "Vortex," she even defamiliarizes a commonplace restaurant where a busser named Joseph unwittingly opens a portal to another dimension by walking the wrong way through the in/out doors, allowing Wyss to point out that "Time, for what it's worth, was the fourth dimension in the world most commonly called 'reality.' "
Through her casual yet thoughtful incorporation of genre elements — be they sci-fi, fairy tales or horror — Wyss warps the reader's perception, offering an aptly absurd angle on everything from earthworms to bus stations to suspicious looking moles.
In "From the Multiverse Chronicles," she explores "the nature of friendship" by placing the two main characters in a world made of "plain yogurt, and nothing else, nothing at all," an oddly compelling move that's almost like a latter-day (and shorter) version of "The Woman in the Dunes."
And in "Curse the Toad," she flips the usual script and has her heroine wonder if the real jinx would be forcing a toad "to become a man."
So, too, does she play innovatively with forms, telling one story entirely as the "Final Journal Entry of Dr. Francis Longfellow Hendrix, Lead Scientist at Laboratory 78, Edited by A.L. White," a study of ghosts replete with erudite footnotes. Her flash fictions, including "Garden," "Sleep Birds" and "Fishing," show what intensity and depth of atmosphere can be created in just a few hundred carefully chosen words.
Wyss is also the co-founder of the Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop, which describes itself as being "for the tiny little weirdo inside you — the voice that insists on creating strange universes or imagining different worlds," offering courses that "nurture the iconoclast, help you knit your freak flag, and support you as you discover new ways of seeing — and of saying." Wyss's own bizarre and biting book gets weird and flies its freak flag in the best possible ways.
May 18, 2022
A wonderful debut story collection! Alternating stories that are more realistic with those more imaginary, Wyss sets her characters lose to explore boundaries and refuse them. Some are fixated on what is real and therefore, they think, more likely to last. They contemplate not navels, but nutsacks, while floating in space. They reach for each other in a world made only of yogurt, where the self and other become like one. They modify their bodies or the bodies of others in more or less permanent ways—with tattoos, cosmetic surgery, transmogrification, or simply hacking off limbs. A metal detector becomes almost hardwired to a volunteer security guard when it runs out of batteries. An electrician can enjoy his evening bike ride only when outfitted with resilient, inflatable breasts. Prepare to be moved and entertained by a cast of characters striving to become more themselves.
November 13, 2022
Weird, magical, and disturbing in the best way. Wyss's stories will constantly keep you on your toes and make you squirm in your seat. An in-depth exploration of what it means to be a body, Splendid Anatomies is that rare combination of careful crafting that makes these stories complex and layered while also retaining a healthy sense of fun. Go move your body right now and grab a copy of this book!
April 25, 2022
Totally weird in all the right ways, these short stories ground themselves deeply in the physical body and its traumas to take you on journeys from a yogurt-based multiverse to the (bleeding) edge of a fishing dock. Its fun, deep, and very worth your time.
May 4, 2022
What a treat to indulge in this story collection! Very fun, quirky tales with interesting characters and scenarios. It is a pleasant escape from ordinary life to delve into the stories in this book!
Excellent, creative writing at its finest. Look forward to more from this new author and I congratulate her on this fine and highly enjoyable book. Mary B
Excellent, creative writing at its finest. Look forward to more from this new author and I congratulate her on this fine and highly enjoyable book. Mary B
March 7, 2022
Fascinating very original read.
July 6, 2023
A finalist for the Shirley Jackson awards, this collection of fables explores and reveals how many seek ways to connect not just despite their wounds but because of them. Some fantastical, some realistic, and all will give you plenty to think about and remember after the last page is turned. Will be looking for what's next from this writer.
June 28, 2022
A few of the short stories were very good. But not many.
December 13, 2022
This collection is so original it's startling, a fresh reminder of the horror of living in a body. Another example of why we need independent presses.
February 6, 2023
Juicy little nuggets of gore and organ and magic and fairytale that rend and tear and chew.
May 10, 2025
This book was a new and wonderful experience for my eyes, and brain, and other various body parts. Six stars.
January 17, 2026
Offbeat, compulsively readable, memorable, and a perfectly crafted story collection - start to finish. Highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews