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Out There
8 hours
A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life.
With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut short story collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in 'The New Yorker', a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by "blots," preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection.
Prescient and wildly imaginative, 'OUT THERE' depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.
©2022 Kate Folk (P)2022 Random House Audio
A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life.
With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut short story collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in 'The New Yorker', a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by "blots," preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection.
Prescient and wildly imaginative, 'OUT THERE' depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.
©2022 Kate Folk (P)2022 Random House Audio
8 pages, Audible Audio
First published March 29, 2022
372 people are currently reading
25161 people want to read
About the author
Kate Folk
6 books641 followersKate Folk is the author of the novel SKY DADDY (2025) and the story collection OUT THERE (2022). Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, and The Baffler, among others. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she’s also received support for her writing from MacDowell, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and Willapa Bay AiR. Originally from Iowa, she lives in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,549 reviews
July 13, 2022
a new all time favourite collection
April 25, 2022
I found Kate Folk’s “Out There” stories to be so bizarre that I could not wrap my head around any of them! Perhaps it was the Sci-fi element!
For me the creepiest one “The Bone Ward” was about people suffering from a rare bone disease which makes their bones melt overnight. That made my own bones melt in sympathy!! The most disturbing was “Moist House” in which a man must keep a house moist at all costs, in which he develops a serious and disturbing attraction. And for those on the dating scene, she’s compiled two stories about human robots created to seduce women through dating apps so that they can steal their identities and password-protected data. In “Dating a Somnambulist” a woman finds out the eerie things her boyfriend does while sleeping. “The Head in the Floor” is as bizarre as the title. In fact, all the stories are out there.
They are meant to make the reader feel uneasy, but in an amusing way. I just felt uneasy. It’s even more creepy than “The X-Files”. I am NOT the target audience for this one, so take my rating with a huge grain of salt. I chose to listen to the audio with a different narrator for each story. The chosen narrators were perfect for each story. It is a bit over 7 hours.
For me the creepiest one “The Bone Ward” was about people suffering from a rare bone disease which makes their bones melt overnight. That made my own bones melt in sympathy!! The most disturbing was “Moist House” in which a man must keep a house moist at all costs, in which he develops a serious and disturbing attraction. And for those on the dating scene, she’s compiled two stories about human robots created to seduce women through dating apps so that they can steal their identities and password-protected data. In “Dating a Somnambulist” a woman finds out the eerie things her boyfriend does while sleeping. “The Head in the Floor” is as bizarre as the title. In fact, all the stories are out there.
They are meant to make the reader feel uneasy, but in an amusing way. I just felt uneasy. It’s even more creepy than “The X-Files”. I am NOT the target audience for this one, so take my rating with a huge grain of salt. I chose to listen to the audio with a different narrator for each story. The chosen narrators were perfect for each story. It is a bit over 7 hours.
February 27, 2023
Edited: Bumping to 4.5 stars because I'm still thinking about this one
So delightfully weird! As with most short story collections, there are some highs and some lows, but there are several stories that I think will really stick with me, along with the whole concept of "blots." Definitely recommend for anyone looking for a distinctive perspective, dystopian SF elements, and strong feminist themes!
So delightfully weird! As with most short story collections, there are some highs and some lows, but there are several stories that I think will really stick with me, along with the whole concept of "blots." Definitely recommend for anyone looking for a distinctive perspective, dystopian SF elements, and strong feminist themes!
May 15, 2022
UPDATE: Finished reading, and I'm OBSESSED with this book. I don't know Kate Folk, but now I'm going to cyberstalk her and hope I can meet her at some point because, wow, this woman has a brilliant and very strange mind (in the best possible way!) and I want to pick her brain about storytelling and worldbuilding and EVERYTHING!
I started with reading her flash stories while taking short short breaks from writing, and I love how much she manages to pack in in just a few pages. The compression is so impressive. But I think the longer pieces may be my favorite. BIG SUR, the last story in the collection, is a prequel to OUT THERE, the story of an early blot who reminds me of Data in Star Trek TNG in his earnestness and vulnerability (although ugh, now I'm remembering the awful episode with him and Lt Yar). SHELTER is another favorite, and BONE WARD--all stories of intense loneliness that lead the (mostly) women in the stories to do drastic, irrational things that would be incomprehensible if Folk hadn't done such an amazing job of making the readers understand and empathize with them. HIGHLY recommended. I'm blown away.
****
I screamed out loud when I opened my mail yesterday and saw this beautiful book inside. I remember reading the title story, OUT THERE, in the New Yorker in the initial days of the lockdown. I can't believe that was two years ago, it's still so fresh in my mind. Hilarious, weird, bizarre, and eerie as hell--a literary version of my favorite episodes of Black Mirror. I haven't read all the stories in this collection, but I've read several since then, and I love them. So I guess my five star rating is preliminary, but I'm positive I'm going to love them all.
I started with reading her flash stories while taking short short breaks from writing, and I love how much she manages to pack in in just a few pages. The compression is so impressive. But I think the longer pieces may be my favorite. BIG SUR, the last story in the collection, is a prequel to OUT THERE, the story of an early blot who reminds me of Data in Star Trek TNG in his earnestness and vulnerability (although ugh, now I'm remembering the awful episode with him and Lt Yar). SHELTER is another favorite, and BONE WARD--all stories of intense loneliness that lead the (mostly) women in the stories to do drastic, irrational things that would be incomprehensible if Folk hadn't done such an amazing job of making the readers understand and empathize with them. HIGHLY recommended. I'm blown away.
****
I screamed out loud when I opened my mail yesterday and saw this beautiful book inside. I remember reading the title story, OUT THERE, in the New Yorker in the initial days of the lockdown. I can't believe that was two years ago, it's still so fresh in my mind. Hilarious, weird, bizarre, and eerie as hell--a literary version of my favorite episodes of Black Mirror. I haven't read all the stories in this collection, but I've read several since then, and I love them. So I guess my five star rating is preliminary, but I'm positive I'm going to love them all.
April 5, 2022
Another collection of short stories about modern life and relationships with light speculative elements, to be shelved next to
Cosmogony
by Lucy Ives and
You Will Never Be Forgotten
by Mary South. Out There bears the hallmarks of many debut collections by young female writers (listless narration, joyless sex, life-on-the-internet stuff) and features what I described in my review of Forgotten as ‘not quite body horror, [but] certainly bodily squeamishness’ (organ fetishes, a condition that causes people’s bones to melt every night, buildings with fleshy walls). The collection is bookended by two of the best stories – ‘Out There’ and ‘Big Sur’ – both of which deal with the challenges of a dating scene infested by ‘blots’, fake people designed to harvest data from women. Also strong are ‘The Bone Ward’, in which a woman desperately tries to hold on to a relationship she’s started in hospital; ‘Shelter’, in which a dissatisfied wife chooses an unusual method of escape; ‘Moist House’, one of the few stories with a male narrator, who replaces his wife and mistress with a singularly demanding house; and especially ‘A Scale Model of Gull Point’, about the last survivor in a ravaged resort creating art amid destruction. Most of the other stories, however, bored me, and I often found myself longing for a more lively narrative, a less sterile tone. It’s not really this specific book or author’s fault that I’m being a bit harsh here; if I’d read it a few years ago my rating probably would’ve been four stars. It’s just that I’ve read so many short stories with the exact same voice, and I feel I’ve encountered better versions of some of Out There’s ideas in collections by Mariana Enríquez, Kristen Roupenian and Alexander Weinstein.
I received an advance review copy of Out There from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Linktree
I received an advance review copy of Out There from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Linktree
March 5, 2022
Shouts out to Net Galley and Random House for the ARC.
Kate Folk fits neatly into the contemporary obsession with magical realism--when everything has already been written about, we have to warp reality just to illuminate it. Kelly Link and Aimee Bender were early contenders for the crown, although Carmen Maria Machado did her damn thing too.
At this point, the subgenre is clotted, imitators of imitators churning out "quirky" little tales with the same lessons about the patriarchy and listless modern relationships.
However, Kate Folk is a tremendous writer, and the power of a tightly crafted story supersedes familiar tropes and story structures. For me, her prose is the perfect balance of calibrated first-person voice, sensory detail, stimulating dialogue, construction of setting, contemporary satire, and pangs of emotional resonance. What some might call "emotional distance" is rather a trust in the reader, inviting us to examine motivation, casting no judgment on perverse (and perverted) characters. Humor in prose is the rarest quality you could search for, and Folk often had me smiling, all alone, like a freaking Blot.
Some of the stories fall flat, as you might expect, the tricks more clever than utilitarian. The great ones outnumber the poor ones, luckily, proving Kate Folk is a singular talent among a field of mediocrity.
Kate Folk fits neatly into the contemporary obsession with magical realism--when everything has already been written about, we have to warp reality just to illuminate it. Kelly Link and Aimee Bender were early contenders for the crown, although Carmen Maria Machado did her damn thing too.
At this point, the subgenre is clotted, imitators of imitators churning out "quirky" little tales with the same lessons about the patriarchy and listless modern relationships.
However, Kate Folk is a tremendous writer, and the power of a tightly crafted story supersedes familiar tropes and story structures. For me, her prose is the perfect balance of calibrated first-person voice, sensory detail, stimulating dialogue, construction of setting, contemporary satire, and pangs of emotional resonance. What some might call "emotional distance" is rather a trust in the reader, inviting us to examine motivation, casting no judgment on perverse (and perverted) characters. Humor in prose is the rarest quality you could search for, and Folk often had me smiling, all alone, like a freaking Blot.
Some of the stories fall flat, as you might expect, the tricks more clever than utilitarian. The great ones outnumber the poor ones, luckily, proving Kate Folk is a singular talent among a field of mediocrity.
June 6, 2023
✦ a pretty good short story collection overall, perfect for those who enjoy bizarre and weird sci-fi/dystopian themes. most of these stories could easily be made into Black Mirror episodes.
✦ however, i do think certain aspects could have been expanded on and developed more, because some of the stories had a great set up, but ended up falling flat in the end.
✦ my favourites - Out there, Heart Seeks Brain, The Bone Ward, Big Sur.
✦ however, i do think certain aspects could have been expanded on and developed more, because some of the stories had a great set up, but ended up falling flat in the end.
✦ my favourites - Out there, Heart Seeks Brain, The Bone Ward, Big Sur.
July 14, 2023
Reading Kate Folk's Out There really unlocked a core memory for me - that of my first encounter with weird fiction.
When I was little, I read through the EC compilation Horror Comics of the 1950's. It included selections from their imprints Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, The Haunt of Fear, among others. The comics were pulpy, lurid, and extreme - certainly unsuitable for minors, but only when I was that young could they have affected me so.
Basically an adult's coffee table book, each page felt huge and heavy in my small hands. Turning them was an effort, and I was terrified of what I might see next, still at an age when something as simple as a skull scared me.
Yet I kept doing it because I had never seen such things before - colors so rich I could taste them, figures so alien they seemed to have come out of my dreams, worlds that matched the mystery of my own, knowing so little about it because I was still so young.
I kept doing it because I quickly learned it was fun to be scared. Because there was much revelry found in the weird.
That bindup was one of the most formative pieces of media I've ever consumed. Certainly, it informed my future tastes, creating a palate the likes of Out There would satisfy.
The stories here are all speculative, and varying degrees of weird. It's about 50/50 whether the weirdness is circumstantial (like haunted houses, apocalypses, or strange new tech) or from the characters' idiosyncrasies. Several stories explore how we're socialized to one another - the small oddities and discomforts of our everyday interactions - and how our actions/attitudes might play out in an uncertain future.
While each story was a slam dunk for me, standouts include the bookending stories - titular Out There and final entry Big Sur, The Last Woman on Earth, The Bone Ward, Doe Eyes, and, perhaps especially, Heart Seeks Brain.
When I was little, I read through the EC compilation Horror Comics of the 1950's. It included selections from their imprints Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, The Haunt of Fear, among others. The comics were pulpy, lurid, and extreme - certainly unsuitable for minors, but only when I was that young could they have affected me so.
Basically an adult's coffee table book, each page felt huge and heavy in my small hands. Turning them was an effort, and I was terrified of what I might see next, still at an age when something as simple as a skull scared me.
Yet I kept doing it because I had never seen such things before - colors so rich I could taste them, figures so alien they seemed to have come out of my dreams, worlds that matched the mystery of my own, knowing so little about it because I was still so young.
I kept doing it because I quickly learned it was fun to be scared. Because there was much revelry found in the weird.
That bindup was one of the most formative pieces of media I've ever consumed. Certainly, it informed my future tastes, creating a palate the likes of Out There would satisfy.
The stories here are all speculative, and varying degrees of weird. It's about 50/50 whether the weirdness is circumstantial (like haunted houses, apocalypses, or strange new tech) or from the characters' idiosyncrasies. Several stories explore how we're socialized to one another - the small oddities and discomforts of our everyday interactions - and how our actions/attitudes might play out in an uncertain future.
While each story was a slam dunk for me, standouts include the bookending stories - titular Out There and final entry Big Sur, The Last Woman on Earth, The Bone Ward, Doe Eyes, and, perhaps especially, Heart Seeks Brain.
July 18, 2023
The longer short stories in here were quite excellent! Loved loved loved the creepiness and human fallacy of The Bone Ward and A Scale Model of Gull Point
February 14, 2023
Out There by Kate Folk is a short story collection that isn't afraid to really go there. We have sentient AI men--"blots"--designed to lure women into relationships so that they can steal their data ("Out There," "Big Sur"), a woman staying in a bone ward because she has a condition that makes her bones dissolve every night ("The Bone Ward"), a woman who becomes obsessed with the storm shelter in her basement ("Shelter"), two women who have a conversation about which organs they have kinks for ("Heart Seeks Brain"). You never really know what you're going to get with these stories, but regardless of how varied they are they all have that Kate Folk DNA that makes them all so compelling.
What buoys every story in this collection is Kate Folk's superb writing. It's sharp, it's lucid, and it has this bone dry sense of humour that I just adored (I actually laughed out loud reading some of these stories). Folk's stories are bizarre, but rather than fixate on it, many of her characters are inclined to respond to this bizarreness in a "well, this might as well happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" kind of way. Case in point, this iconic beginning of "The Head in the Floor": "To be honest things weren't going so well even before the head started coming out of my floor. I was unemployed and universally hated thanks to some choices I'd made." (Like yes, sometimes your life is in shambles, and there's also a human head coming out of your floor. So valid.) I love that these stories didn't always take themselves too seriously, and yet never to the point where they became farcical or felt like they were trying too hard. What I'm trying to get at here is that Folk has such precise control of the tone of her narratives, and when those narratives are short, as is the case here, tone can go such a long way to making a story both distinct and memorable.
Another thing I also loved about this collection is the way Folk writes about women who are not exactly likable, but who are always sympathetic. Many of the women in these stories are desperate, lonely, pathetic even--but I always got them. "Desperate" and "pathetic" sound very pejorative, but I think there's something that's so genuinely interesting about looking at what pushes these women to be desperate or pathetic in the first place. Why are they desperate? And how do they cope with that desperation? In many of the stories in Out There, especially the longer ones, we see different answers to these questions play out. There is the desperation borne out of the repetitiveness of the dating scene ("Out There"), the desperation that builds out of loneliness and estrangement and a feeling of unfulfillment ("Shelter"), the desperation of knowing that the person you want to be with will easily discard you for another woman ("The Bone Ward"), or indeed has already done so with nary a second thought ("Doe Eyes"). And just as Folk presents all of this to us in her clear-eyed, unsentimental way, her women are themselves also--to various degrees--clear-eyed about their own desperation; they are not unself-aware.
Out There is not an especially lighthearted or cheerful collection; it's a real testament to Folk's skilful writing, then, that it still manages to feel like such a refreshing read. What I want to say about it--that it kept me engaged throughout, that I genuinely enjoyed it--sounds so simple and generic, but it just rings true for me: it really was such an engaging and enjoyable collection. Definitely a new addition to my list of favourite short story collections.
PS: My favourite story was easily "Big Sur" (it made me both laugh and cry); other favourites include "Out There," "The Bone Ward," "Shelter," and "A Scale Model of Gull Point."
What buoys every story in this collection is Kate Folk's superb writing. It's sharp, it's lucid, and it has this bone dry sense of humour that I just adored (I actually laughed out loud reading some of these stories). Folk's stories are bizarre, but rather than fixate on it, many of her characters are inclined to respond to this bizarreness in a "well, this might as well happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" kind of way. Case in point, this iconic beginning of "The Head in the Floor": "To be honest things weren't going so well even before the head started coming out of my floor. I was unemployed and universally hated thanks to some choices I'd made." (Like yes, sometimes your life is in shambles, and there's also a human head coming out of your floor. So valid.) I love that these stories didn't always take themselves too seriously, and yet never to the point where they became farcical or felt like they were trying too hard. What I'm trying to get at here is that Folk has such precise control of the tone of her narratives, and when those narratives are short, as is the case here, tone can go such a long way to making a story both distinct and memorable.
Another thing I also loved about this collection is the way Folk writes about women who are not exactly likable, but who are always sympathetic. Many of the women in these stories are desperate, lonely, pathetic even--but I always got them. "Desperate" and "pathetic" sound very pejorative, but I think there's something that's so genuinely interesting about looking at what pushes these women to be desperate or pathetic in the first place. Why are they desperate? And how do they cope with that desperation? In many of the stories in Out There, especially the longer ones, we see different answers to these questions play out. There is the desperation borne out of the repetitiveness of the dating scene ("Out There"), the desperation that builds out of loneliness and estrangement and a feeling of unfulfillment ("Shelter"), the desperation of knowing that the person you want to be with will easily discard you for another woman ("The Bone Ward"), or indeed has already done so with nary a second thought ("Doe Eyes"). And just as Folk presents all of this to us in her clear-eyed, unsentimental way, her women are themselves also--to various degrees--clear-eyed about their own desperation; they are not unself-aware.
"She trains her smile at me, and I force myself to smile back. I want to like Olivia. I'm aware of the ugliness of women who are not interested in friendships with other women; women who claim they only get along with men. Yet when I look at Olivia, my blood seethes. I hate her for how she could ruin my life, without malice, simply by being herself. She could take Bradley from me. She wouldn't even have to try."
Out There is not an especially lighthearted or cheerful collection; it's a real testament to Folk's skilful writing, then, that it still manages to feel like such a refreshing read. What I want to say about it--that it kept me engaged throughout, that I genuinely enjoyed it--sounds so simple and generic, but it just rings true for me: it really was such an engaging and enjoyable collection. Definitely a new addition to my list of favourite short story collections.
PS: My favourite story was easily "Big Sur" (it made me both laugh and cry); other favourites include "Out There," "The Bone Ward," "Shelter," and "A Scale Model of Gull Point."
March 30, 2022
Audiobook…..read by Sophie Amoss, Hannah Choi, Michael Crouch, Will Damron, Renata Friedman, Kristen Sieh
…..7 hours and 13 minutes
These fifteen ‘short stories’ are crazy good….
…..fresh, contemporary, hilarious, weird, highly imaginative, …..and just the ‘mood changer’ audiobook entertainment I wanted and needed.
YEP …. a terrific ‘mood changer’ palate cleanser!
For me….and others of us who live in the SFBay area, it’s exciting to be introduced to a new Bay Area author, Kate Folk. (she makes us proud). It’s a treat to walk the streets of SF and Northern Cal. with Folk.
Sex in Oakland was satisfying ….. the Farmers Market had fresh kale, apples, ginger, etc. …… and restaurants in SF were conversational-friendship yummy.
The STORIES themselves …. > > > > its a whole new world of of storytelling.....
In the title story, “Out There”…. we meet a thirty year old woman - a transplant to San Francisco—(ten years so far), who has recently learned about Blot Technology. She has two part time jobs teaching ESL and Art…..and has just started dating Sam who she meets on Tinder….(hoping he’s not a Blot).
From beginning to end we are earnestly listening carefully.
On a getaway weekend, the new Tinder couple go to a clothing optional retreat - east of Mendocino (Folk didn’t mention the name - so I won’t either)….but I’ve been — many times….(only vegetarian foods are allowed). Guests prepare their own meals in the co-op kitchen. Swim suits in the pools stand out more than naked bodies do.
“Out There” was not only an Al-generated-android-modern dating intimate genetically modified newly harvested extraordinaire ….
But….
on the same day ….later that night, I came faced with my first BLOT……
WOW! Holy Cow…..honest to god, if I had not just read this story earlier the same day, I wouldn’t have recognized I was being invaded by a BLOT.
Paul and I were relaxing together in the early evening, when I got
an email from an old friend. (I recognized her face photo instantly).
Gale asked how I was. I asked how she was. Within minutes she (or it- or he as Blot), asked me if I had heard of about the new government grants. She was excited to spend her gifted $120,000. She said:
“I could receive the free gifted money too”.
I KNEW SOMETHING WAS UP….
Paul said to me…..
“Ask Gale if she would please tell me where we worked together years ago”.
My answer: (after a long pause):
“OK”
I wrote back…
“YOU FAILED….you are not my friend and do not ever contact me again”,
So….not only was Kate Folk’s story funny as hell - yet creepy real -
[God, I live a sheltered life]….but I have Folk to ‘thank’ for quickly saving my ass from the COOKIE MONSTER.
Apparently this title story appeared in the New Yorker a couple of years ago — was a hit then —
These BLOTS are getting sophisticated and anyone who participates online needs to watch out for them.
In the meantime “Out There” is a fun memorable story -(informative for a few of us who live under rocks),
with a wonderful laughable ending.
The other stories?….
They only get more bizarre….
Crazy Good, as I’ve already mentioned.
…..bone melting disorder? (just what we need another disorder), Russian Hackers? (feels current), a house with varied body parts? A floor with a human man’s head rising at about a quarter in a day? a toilet that seems to be eating itself, pizza and tools, Tahoe bachelor party, dissolving bones, Taco Bell dating, Dad reading Nazi books, a Phd student looking for a Deer Hunter, to accidentally shoot her,(not kill; a husband attention device), a sleep walking boyfriend who brings M&M’s, back to bed, a strange sleep clinic doctor, a jellyfish found under the sheets, undesirable houses for rent, a Family - ‘original’ - Thanksgiving in Sonoma, more dating, straight and Gay, California tourist stereotyping, democratic dinner, harvesting eyes, stunningly handsome men, complicated feelings about dating (dread and excitement), …..
Idiosyncratic tales from San Francisco to Big Sur….
…..eerily tremendous!
Stories include:
“The Last Women on Earth”
“Heart Seeks Brain”
“The Void Wife”
“Shelter”
“The Head in the Floor”
“Tahoe”
“The Bone Ward”
“Doe Eyes”
“The House’s Beating Heart”
“A Scale Model of Gull Point”
“Dating a Somnambulist”
“Moist House”
“The Turkey Rumble”
“Big Sur”
I’ve must share this quote by Chang-Rae Lee…..
"One could fancy Kate Folk as the literary love child of Kafka and Camus and Bradbury, if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of ‘Black Mirror’, but that still wouldn’t capture the blazing originality and exhilarating weirdness of her writing. From the moment you read these tales, you’ll know you’re in the presence of a singularly brilliant vision”.
I couldn’t agree more with the “literary love child singularly brilliant vision”, description.
And….
These stories provide a rare glimpse of how humor can affect us just as much as drama and tragedy.
I like our newbie literary love child. Looking forward to reading more of her work.
…..7 hours and 13 minutes
These fifteen ‘short stories’ are crazy good….
…..fresh, contemporary, hilarious, weird, highly imaginative, …..and just the ‘mood changer’ audiobook entertainment I wanted and needed.
YEP …. a terrific ‘mood changer’ palate cleanser!
For me….and others of us who live in the SFBay area, it’s exciting to be introduced to a new Bay Area author, Kate Folk. (she makes us proud). It’s a treat to walk the streets of SF and Northern Cal. with Folk.
Sex in Oakland was satisfying ….. the Farmers Market had fresh kale, apples, ginger, etc. …… and restaurants in SF were conversational-friendship yummy.
The STORIES themselves …. > > > > its a whole new world of of storytelling.....
In the title story, “Out There”…. we meet a thirty year old woman - a transplant to San Francisco—(ten years so far), who has recently learned about Blot Technology. She has two part time jobs teaching ESL and Art…..and has just started dating Sam who she meets on Tinder….(hoping he’s not a Blot).
From beginning to end we are earnestly listening carefully.
On a getaway weekend, the new Tinder couple go to a clothing optional retreat - east of Mendocino (Folk didn’t mention the name - so I won’t either)….but I’ve been — many times….(only vegetarian foods are allowed). Guests prepare their own meals in the co-op kitchen. Swim suits in the pools stand out more than naked bodies do.
“Out There” was not only an Al-generated-android-modern dating intimate genetically modified newly harvested extraordinaire ….
But….
on the same day ….later that night, I came faced with my first BLOT……
WOW! Holy Cow…..honest to god, if I had not just read this story earlier the same day, I wouldn’t have recognized I was being invaded by a BLOT.
Paul and I were relaxing together in the early evening, when I got
an email from an old friend. (I recognized her face photo instantly).
Gale asked how I was. I asked how she was. Within minutes she (or it- or he as Blot), asked me if I had heard of about the new government grants. She was excited to spend her gifted $120,000. She said:
“I could receive the free gifted money too”.
I KNEW SOMETHING WAS UP….
Paul said to me…..
“Ask Gale if she would please tell me where we worked together years ago”.
My answer: (after a long pause):
“OK”
I wrote back…
“YOU FAILED….you are not my friend and do not ever contact me again”,
So….not only was Kate Folk’s story funny as hell - yet creepy real -
[God, I live a sheltered life]….but I have Folk to ‘thank’ for quickly saving my ass from the COOKIE MONSTER.
Apparently this title story appeared in the New Yorker a couple of years ago — was a hit then —
These BLOTS are getting sophisticated and anyone who participates online needs to watch out for them.
In the meantime “Out There” is a fun memorable story -(informative for a few of us who live under rocks),
with a wonderful laughable ending.
The other stories?….
They only get more bizarre….
Crazy Good, as I’ve already mentioned.
…..bone melting disorder? (just what we need another disorder), Russian Hackers? (feels current), a house with varied body parts? A floor with a human man’s head rising at about a quarter in a day? a toilet that seems to be eating itself, pizza and tools, Tahoe bachelor party, dissolving bones, Taco Bell dating, Dad reading Nazi books, a Phd student looking for a Deer Hunter, to accidentally shoot her,(not kill; a husband attention device), a sleep walking boyfriend who brings M&M’s, back to bed, a strange sleep clinic doctor, a jellyfish found under the sheets, undesirable houses for rent, a Family - ‘original’ - Thanksgiving in Sonoma, more dating, straight and Gay, California tourist stereotyping, democratic dinner, harvesting eyes, stunningly handsome men, complicated feelings about dating (dread and excitement), …..
Idiosyncratic tales from San Francisco to Big Sur….
…..eerily tremendous!
Stories include:
“The Last Women on Earth”
“Heart Seeks Brain”
“The Void Wife”
“Shelter”
“The Head in the Floor”
“Tahoe”
“The Bone Ward”
“Doe Eyes”
“The House’s Beating Heart”
“A Scale Model of Gull Point”
“Dating a Somnambulist”
“Moist House”
“The Turkey Rumble”
“Big Sur”
I’ve must share this quote by Chang-Rae Lee…..
"One could fancy Kate Folk as the literary love child of Kafka and Camus and Bradbury, if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of ‘Black Mirror’, but that still wouldn’t capture the blazing originality and exhilarating weirdness of her writing. From the moment you read these tales, you’ll know you’re in the presence of a singularly brilliant vision”.
I couldn’t agree more with the “literary love child singularly brilliant vision”, description.
And….
These stories provide a rare glimpse of how humor can affect us just as much as drama and tragedy.
I like our newbie literary love child. Looking forward to reading more of her work.
March 5, 2025
So many 5-star stories here. I can't stop thinking about most of them. I have to round up because of that. Weird feminist scifi for the win 👏
October 1, 2024
Hey this works! I love the writing. I love the voice. I love the general eeriness and those disturbing horror plots/ideas. Every single story in the first half of the book is just simply great.
My favorite one "The Head in the Floor" is only 5 pages long but manages to be super memorable to me.
My favorite one "The Head in the Floor" is only 5 pages long but manages to be super memorable to me.
January 6, 2023
This is weird. Well written!
But fucking weird.
Maybe the weirdest thing I’ve ever read.
And I like Jeff VanderMeer.
It is aptly named and made me laugh out loud.
It is disturbing and gross.
I cringed and very much thought it could be the scariest thing I’ve read since House of Leaves.
Would love to read a full length novel by Folk at some point.
Favorite stories:
Out There
The Head in the Floor
The Bone Ward
Dating a Somnambulist
The Turkey Rumble
But fucking weird.
Maybe the weirdest thing I’ve ever read.
And I like Jeff VanderMeer.
It is aptly named and made me laugh out loud.
It is disturbing and gross.
I cringed and very much thought it could be the scariest thing I’ve read since House of Leaves.
Would love to read a full length novel by Folk at some point.
Favorite stories:
Out There
The Head in the Floor
The Bone Ward
Dating a Somnambulist
The Turkey Rumble
July 13, 2023
Short story collection looking at the digital age and how it has manipulated our social interactions and behaviours leading to new experiences and vulnerabilities. There's a lot of loneliness that permeates the stories, lots of bleakness. I'd read some reviews compare this to Black Mirror, but in my opinion this is not in the same league. A lot of the stories don't really have much substance to them, and no cohesiveness. They felt weird just for the sake of being weird without adding anything. A break down of each story:
Out There: A woman puts herself back in the dating pool even with the risk of being scammed by 'blots'- attractive fake humans who want to steal personal data by impersonating charming single men. This felt like an examination of where technology is heading, taking the false text messages people get these days to a whole other level.
The Last Woman on Earth - Very short story that examines what the last woman on earth does. Apparently it's make pies, be some kind of surrogate mother to the world's men on a talk show and die young. It was a bit too short to leave a lasting impression.
Heart Seeks Brain - Really weird novelette about two woman meeting over dinner and discussing their dating preferences. Except it seems society has gone down the route of finding particular organs attractive and couples give up parts of themselves to their partners. This felt like a Sayaka Murata story.
The Void Wife - the world is being consumed by a black void, leading people to create superstitious opinions and end of world gestures. The protagonist is floundering, a little lost and desperate to not share her last touch on earth with a man she barely knows.
Shelter - The slow unravelling of a woman's obsession with a locked shelter door and what could possibly be behind it. This was weird.
The Head in the Floor - So weird a short story that I immediately erased the whole plot from my mind. It was basically about a strange mark on a floor that grows into something more. I think.
Tahoe - another really short story about a group of guys who take things to the extreme while on someone's bachelor party. Or is it? Memories can be tricky things.
The Bone Ward - a longer story about a ward of patients who suffer from a rare condition that liquifies their bones on a night. Our protagonist is initially the only woman on the ward and is engaged in a sexual relationship with one of the other patients. However the introduction of a new patient tests everyone. This just felt like such a lonely story, with the main character desperately grabbing any affection, even if it's toxic.
Doe Eyes - I'm finding that as these stories progress I'm liking them less and less. This was another odd one, where a woman who becomes so desperate to feel something that she dresses up like a doe to try and get shot by hunters. Yeah, I didn't get it.
The Houses Beating Heart - A living house, a group of students discovering various organs. You know its not going to end well.
A Scale Model of Gull Point - I take everything I said back. This is one of thr best stories. A woman, alone overlooking a city in anarchy, recreates a model version while she contemplates her fate. Chilling.
Dating a Somnambulist - liked this one too. A woman's boyfriend brings home increasingly bizarre things while sleepwalking. This was a lot more lighthearted than the other stories.
Moist House - and we're back to weird and illogical. This one is about a man who has to continuously moisten a house with lotion otherwise the house gets dry. Made no sense.
The Turkey Rumble - I quite liked this one. A couple go back home for thanksgiving and partake in an odd family tradition that involves causing physical pain on each other. Que granny getting punched in the stomach and someone getting beat around the head with a bag full of ice. It was utterly bizarre.
Big Sur - a companion piece of sorts to Out There, following a blot and their love story of sorts. I liked how this tied into the first story, offering up another point of view on blots and their vulnerability.
Out There: A woman puts herself back in the dating pool even with the risk of being scammed by 'blots'- attractive fake humans who want to steal personal data by impersonating charming single men. This felt like an examination of where technology is heading, taking the false text messages people get these days to a whole other level.
The Last Woman on Earth - Very short story that examines what the last woman on earth does. Apparently it's make pies, be some kind of surrogate mother to the world's men on a talk show and die young. It was a bit too short to leave a lasting impression.
Heart Seeks Brain - Really weird novelette about two woman meeting over dinner and discussing their dating preferences. Except it seems society has gone down the route of finding particular organs attractive and couples give up parts of themselves to their partners. This felt like a Sayaka Murata story.
The Void Wife - the world is being consumed by a black void, leading people to create superstitious opinions and end of world gestures. The protagonist is floundering, a little lost and desperate to not share her last touch on earth with a man she barely knows.
Shelter - The slow unravelling of a woman's obsession with a locked shelter door and what could possibly be behind it. This was weird.
The Head in the Floor - So weird a short story that I immediately erased the whole plot from my mind. It was basically about a strange mark on a floor that grows into something more. I think.
Tahoe - another really short story about a group of guys who take things to the extreme while on someone's bachelor party. Or is it? Memories can be tricky things.
The Bone Ward - a longer story about a ward of patients who suffer from a rare condition that liquifies their bones on a night. Our protagonist is initially the only woman on the ward and is engaged in a sexual relationship with one of the other patients. However the introduction of a new patient tests everyone. This just felt like such a lonely story, with the main character desperately grabbing any affection, even if it's toxic.
Doe Eyes - I'm finding that as these stories progress I'm liking them less and less. This was another odd one, where a woman who becomes so desperate to feel something that she dresses up like a doe to try and get shot by hunters. Yeah, I didn't get it.
The Houses Beating Heart - A living house, a group of students discovering various organs. You know its not going to end well.
A Scale Model of Gull Point - I take everything I said back. This is one of thr best stories. A woman, alone overlooking a city in anarchy, recreates a model version while she contemplates her fate. Chilling.
Dating a Somnambulist - liked this one too. A woman's boyfriend brings home increasingly bizarre things while sleepwalking. This was a lot more lighthearted than the other stories.
Moist House - and we're back to weird and illogical. This one is about a man who has to continuously moisten a house with lotion otherwise the house gets dry. Made no sense.
The Turkey Rumble - I quite liked this one. A couple go back home for thanksgiving and partake in an odd family tradition that involves causing physical pain on each other. Que granny getting punched in the stomach and someone getting beat around the head with a bag full of ice. It was utterly bizarre.
Big Sur - a companion piece of sorts to Out There, following a blot and their love story of sorts. I liked how this tied into the first story, offering up another point of view on blots and their vulnerability.
June 26, 2024
Weird women are definitely something that'll keep me coming back for more and this one delivered a very generous serving of that.
I loved this book so much, there wasn't really any story that I didn't enjoy though I did particularly like the fact that the first and last story were loosely connected. There's a lot of "dating is hell" vibes in there featuring the whole gamut of women from the relatable to the deeply unhinged. There's a story featuring a bone liquefying disease and another with a wormhole, also there's chatbots made physical and I really don't know what more you could want from your weird girl fic?
That being said, while the stories are strange the writing style isn't, it felt intentional, polished, and approachable which I really appreciated.
If like me you couldn't get enough of this book/if you enjoyed these read this one: it reminded me of another favorite of mine, if you want more of that unsettling, sometimes apocalyptic weird girlie doing unhinged thing, The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde might just do it for you (even the covers have something of a similar vibe). And if I may venture more recommendations for similarly aesthetic woman centric vibes Strange little Ghouls by Wendy Dalrymple would also be in the similar vein as would Unshod, Cackling, and Naked by Tamika Thompson. All were 5 stars reads for me. (Yes, if you make it weird and put the title in neon pink I will read it, why do you ask?)
I loved this book so much, there wasn't really any story that I didn't enjoy though I did particularly like the fact that the first and last story were loosely connected. There's a lot of "dating is hell" vibes in there featuring the whole gamut of women from the relatable to the deeply unhinged. There's a story featuring a bone liquefying disease and another with a wormhole, also there's chatbots made physical and I really don't know what more you could want from your weird girl fic?
That being said, while the stories are strange the writing style isn't, it felt intentional, polished, and approachable which I really appreciated.
If like me you couldn't get enough of this book/if you enjoyed these read this one: it reminded me of another favorite of mine, if you want more of that unsettling, sometimes apocalyptic weird girlie doing unhinged thing, The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde might just do it for you (even the covers have something of a similar vibe). And if I may venture more recommendations for similarly aesthetic woman centric vibes Strange little Ghouls by Wendy Dalrymple would also be in the similar vein as would Unshod, Cackling, and Naked by Tamika Thompson. All were 5 stars reads for me. (Yes, if you make it weird and put the title in neon pink I will read it, why do you ask?)
December 1, 2023
In this short story collection I liked the ideas more than the stories.
There were a lot of interesting concepts:
➳ a world infested by “blots”, where you’re never sure if you’re dating a person or something non-human
➳ a world where people are obsessed with the beauty and size of someone’s guts and internal organs
➳ sentient houses or a house where a head is randomly growing out of the floorboards
And many more bizarre ideas with sci-fi themes combined with humor. Some of the stories felt like they could be Black Mirror episodes. But it’s the execution and the overall pace that made this collection not as enjoyable or as memorable as it could have been.
To me, it felt like the author was just writing about mundane, boring people with no discerning personalities and describing their mundane lives and mundane relationships and all their sexual encounters and fantasies while the horror elements were barely secondary to the stories - which is fine but it’s just not for me.
Almost all of the stories were about cold, detached, unfulfilled women obsessed with their boyfriends, husbands, exes or just generally the men around them. There was no variety in characters. It feels like the author just had one character template and used it in all of the stories with the horror elements just sprinkled throughout.
I didn’t dislike any of the stories but they weren’t well-executed or memorable either. 2.5 stars.
There were a lot of interesting concepts:
➳ a world infested by “blots”, where you’re never sure if you’re dating a person or something non-human
➳ a world where people are obsessed with the beauty and size of someone’s guts and internal organs
➳ sentient houses or a house where a head is randomly growing out of the floorboards
And many more bizarre ideas with sci-fi themes combined with humor. Some of the stories felt like they could be Black Mirror episodes. But it’s the execution and the overall pace that made this collection not as enjoyable or as memorable as it could have been.
To me, it felt like the author was just writing about mundane, boring people with no discerning personalities and describing their mundane lives and mundane relationships and all their sexual encounters and fantasies while the horror elements were barely secondary to the stories - which is fine but it’s just not for me.
Almost all of the stories were about cold, detached, unfulfilled women obsessed with their boyfriends, husbands, exes or just generally the men around them. There was no variety in characters. It feels like the author just had one character template and used it in all of the stories with the horror elements just sprinkled throughout.
I didn’t dislike any of the stories but they weren’t well-executed or memorable either. 2.5 stars.
April 1, 2022
A debut collection of short stories by Kate Folk that is receiving quite a lot of acclaim. It was just a little too quirky for me and one of which I found it almost impossible to remember any story twenty minutes after finishing it. I get it, and I am sure most people will love it. My three stars represents an attempt to situate my review somewhere between what I felt and what others will probably feel. I am sure that is not how it is suppose to work, but what the hell. No author should suffer for my odd preferences.
May 12, 2022
This is one of those collections where almost every story begins with an interesting and/or surprising premise but then fails to develop and/or deliver. It feels like the author thought the idea itself was all she needed and then threw up flimsy scaffolding around it and called it complete. Some of them reek so awfully of this that you can almost just sense how clever/quirky the author thinks they are every time you get a premise involving: a head stuck in a floor; a house with walls that need lotion like skin; a disease like extreme osteoporosis where bones dissolve and must be regrown in specialized hospital wards. These all sound potentially interesting. But when almost all fall flat, you start to feel like the collection is just one big exercise in “What if *that* happened? Oh!! Good one!” Some of them are more fleshed out and that kept this from being a 1 star, but it’s surprising to me that so many people seem to have loved this. Then again, the Chang-Rae Lee endorsement on the cover maybe should’ve been red flag number 1. If the same people that like his stuff like this one, yeeeeeep—that makes sense.
May 10, 2022
This collection of short stories was soooooo good.
An uncomfortably realistic take on the Bay area, the tech world, science and the body. After living in downtown San Francisco for 3 years I can tell you the stories about the "Blots" are probably actually happening for real.
An uncomfortably realistic take on the Bay area, the tech world, science and the body. After living in downtown San Francisco for 3 years I can tell you the stories about the "Blots" are probably actually happening for real.
April 2, 2022
First off, I love short story collections. And this one was just...BONKERS!
This collection contains 15 short stories, some are brief but leave a lasting impression. I truly enjoyed all of them. If you like weird, quirky, and eccentric stories - then you will devour this. Kate Folk has a unique and talented voice. A lot of these stories are absurd but absolutely addicting. The characters sparkle with personality and surprising depth. Even though many of the stories are out-of-the-box, there's a lot of symbolism as well. There's always a hidden meaning to each story which gives the various stories a complex and dynamic feel. The title story and the closer, "Big Sur" are companion pieces. You'll learn what a "blot" is in these kooky stories. "The Turkey Rumble" and "Doe Eyes" had me in stitches. "A Scale Model of Gull Point" is the saddest story of the bunch. I think my favorite was "The Bone Ward" and yikes I did not see that ending coming. A few of the stories take place in creepy houses like "Shelter" and "Moist House". Very morbid but fun. Some readers will be like, "What the hell did I just read?" As for me, I LOVE oddball characters. Wholly original and yet poignant. These stories will stay with me for a long time.
Thank you, Netgalley and Random House for the digital ARC.
This collection contains 15 short stories, some are brief but leave a lasting impression. I truly enjoyed all of them. If you like weird, quirky, and eccentric stories - then you will devour this. Kate Folk has a unique and talented voice. A lot of these stories are absurd but absolutely addicting. The characters sparkle with personality and surprising depth. Even though many of the stories are out-of-the-box, there's a lot of symbolism as well. There's always a hidden meaning to each story which gives the various stories a complex and dynamic feel. The title story and the closer, "Big Sur" are companion pieces. You'll learn what a "blot" is in these kooky stories. "The Turkey Rumble" and "Doe Eyes" had me in stitches. "A Scale Model of Gull Point" is the saddest story of the bunch. I think my favorite was "The Bone Ward" and yikes I did not see that ending coming. A few of the stories take place in creepy houses like "Shelter" and "Moist House". Very morbid but fun. Some readers will be like, "What the hell did I just read?" As for me, I LOVE oddball characters. Wholly original and yet poignant. These stories will stay with me for a long time.
Thank you, Netgalley and Random House for the digital ARC.
January 17, 2023
An eclectic mix of sci-fi short stories about love, life and relationships told by a fresh new voice. This collection is aptly named because all the stories feel ‘out there’ – surreal, unsettling, but also strangely funny. The stories take place in the world as we know it, but with speculative elements added to them. These elements impact the lives of the characters in some way, but they are not the focus of the stories. Kate Folk puts relatable, morally grey characters in bizarre scenarios, and explores just how far they are willing to go. She blends horror and humour in her stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s writing style. Comparisons with Black Mirror have also been made, but I feel that Folk’s stories focus more on the inner struggles of the characters than dystopian settings and technology gone awry.
I thought the longer stories in this collection worked better than the ‘short-short’ stories (5-6 pages). Although the latter contained interesting ideas, they felt rushed and underdeveloped. My favourite stories were the title story and the last story, both set in the same world where biomorphic robots with advanced AI have infiltrated the dating scene in order to seduce and steal the data of the women they meet.
I also really enjoyed ‘The Bone Ward’. This is set in a medical ward for people with a condition that causes their bones to melt at night, which then regrow in the morning – an extremely painful process. The story follows an unnamed narrator, the only woman in the ward, who is infatuated with one of the male patients. When another, prettier woman is admitted, the narrator becomes jealous as she starts to lose the interest of the men, in particular the man she is in love with.
Kate Folk is an author I'll be looking out for in the future, and it will be interesting to see what she writes next. I hope it’s a full-length novel.
3.5 stars rounded up.
I thought the longer stories in this collection worked better than the ‘short-short’ stories (5-6 pages). Although the latter contained interesting ideas, they felt rushed and underdeveloped. My favourite stories were the title story and the last story, both set in the same world where biomorphic robots with advanced AI have infiltrated the dating scene in order to seduce and steal the data of the women they meet.
I also really enjoyed ‘The Bone Ward’. This is set in a medical ward for people with a condition that causes their bones to melt at night, which then regrow in the morning – an extremely painful process. The story follows an unnamed narrator, the only woman in the ward, who is infatuated with one of the male patients. When another, prettier woman is admitted, the narrator becomes jealous as she starts to lose the interest of the men, in particular the man she is in love with.
Kate Folk is an author I'll be looking out for in the future, and it will be interesting to see what she writes next. I hope it’s a full-length novel.
3.5 stars rounded up.
August 12, 2022
3.5/5⭐️
This felt like a book of ideas. I loved every idea in here! And I love how Kate Folk's brain works.
But most of these stories were just too short to hook me and ended with less of a "twist" and more with a vaguely threatening note. I wanted more.
If all of these stories had been 75-100 pages, I think it would have been fantastic!
I really loved the stories involving the "blots," The Bone Ward, and The Moist House.
I will definitely read from her again.
This felt like a book of ideas. I loved every idea in here! And I love how Kate Folk's brain works.
But most of these stories were just too short to hook me and ended with less of a "twist" and more with a vaguely threatening note. I wanted more.
If all of these stories had been 75-100 pages, I think it would have been fantastic!
I really loved the stories involving the "blots," The Bone Ward, and The Moist House.
I will definitely read from her again.
February 18, 2023
did not finish, I read 5 or 6 of the stories. really awful, bland writing with zero emotion. the stories are mostly too short for me to even begin to care about what happens to the characters, and the quirky/eerie themes are a feeble attempt at disguising bad writing for societal commentary. overall gross and depressing vibes that are not balanced by any profound meaning.
January 6, 2022
Genre: Short Stories: Science Fiction/ Horror/Black Comedy
Publisher: Random House
Pub. Date: March 29, 2022
The stories of “Out There” offer a razor-sharp analysis of the madness found in everyday life in the digital age. They are creepy, bizarre, and filled with black humor, yet they have a sobering effect on the reader. What makes these strange stories almost credible is that they have elements of truth in them. Folk manages this by tapping into our deepest social and personal anxieties. Still, these shorts are not for all. I am not usually a fan of magical realism. I enjoyed these because they were very well done. Having said that, I want to disclose that I often felt a surrealism overload. I would take a break to read something else for a while before returning to the book. This worked for me.
In the title story, the author takes getting a spam email to a whole other level. Here, a woman decides to break down and check out online dating apps. However, there's a catch: women know that many of the too-handsome-to-believe men who use dating apps are "blots," fake humans who pose as eligible males. Then Folk further plays on our fears. The purpose of the blots is to obtain their targets' personal information for Russian hackers. The premise of the narrative is that women think, "What else can I do to meet someone? Nowadays, people seem to connect exclusively through dating apps." What makes this story so unsettling is that in modern dating we are so hungry for love that we are willing to sacrifice so much of ourselves to find a genuine connection.
Another story exploring the depth of our romantic needs is “The Bone Yard.” It is one of the creepiest stories in the collection. The setting is a medical center where the patients suffer from a mysterious bone-melting disease. Think of any graphic comic, novel, or movie with scenes that illustrate the human body melting into puddles of either goo, jelly-like substances, or just a skeletal structure with bits of slime-like flesh hanging off. The visuals are horrific. In the daytime, the patients receive nursing care as they group together to watch trashy TV shows. In the evening, they sleep in pods to hold their bones together. They often sneak out of the pods to have sex. When their bones are too squishy they are placed in “skeletons,” which are described as painful Iron Lungs. And, believe it or not, it is here that a deadly love triangle begins, which is even scarier than the melting bones. Font expertly spooks with such turns, overshadowing the strange with the familiar. Once again, it’s the everyday need for connection that haunts us most.
The ending short brings us back to the first story on male “blots.” This time the blot’s goal is to have sex with a woman so they can take the woman’s personal data with their penises (I kid you not) to send to the Russians. Intimacy is confronted in surprising ways throughout the collection: a God-like void comes to wipe out the globe, and all must choose who they want to spend eternity with; a man has a textbook codependent relationship, except it is with a house that requires special, demanding care; a loving family accepts their gay son, but also physically harm each other for fun. There’s the one where a head slowly grows out of the floor of a woman’s apartment. And the one that had me squeamishly laughing takes place in a world where sexual encounters revolve around the fetishizing of internal organs. If you are into speculative fiction, you will eat this one up. If you are not, just read one or two stories to admire the author’s skills.
I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.
Find all my book reviews at:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list…
https://books6259.wordpress.com/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review…
https://www.facebook.com/martie.neesr…
https://www.instagram.com/martie6947/
https://www.amazon.com/
https://twitter.com/NeesRecord\
Publisher: Random House
Pub. Date: March 29, 2022
The stories of “Out There” offer a razor-sharp analysis of the madness found in everyday life in the digital age. They are creepy, bizarre, and filled with black humor, yet they have a sobering effect on the reader. What makes these strange stories almost credible is that they have elements of truth in them. Folk manages this by tapping into our deepest social and personal anxieties. Still, these shorts are not for all. I am not usually a fan of magical realism. I enjoyed these because they were very well done. Having said that, I want to disclose that I often felt a surrealism overload. I would take a break to read something else for a while before returning to the book. This worked for me.
In the title story, the author takes getting a spam email to a whole other level. Here, a woman decides to break down and check out online dating apps. However, there's a catch: women know that many of the too-handsome-to-believe men who use dating apps are "blots," fake humans who pose as eligible males. Then Folk further plays on our fears. The purpose of the blots is to obtain their targets' personal information for Russian hackers. The premise of the narrative is that women think, "What else can I do to meet someone? Nowadays, people seem to connect exclusively through dating apps." What makes this story so unsettling is that in modern dating we are so hungry for love that we are willing to sacrifice so much of ourselves to find a genuine connection.
Another story exploring the depth of our romantic needs is “The Bone Yard.” It is one of the creepiest stories in the collection. The setting is a medical center where the patients suffer from a mysterious bone-melting disease. Think of any graphic comic, novel, or movie with scenes that illustrate the human body melting into puddles of either goo, jelly-like substances, or just a skeletal structure with bits of slime-like flesh hanging off. The visuals are horrific. In the daytime, the patients receive nursing care as they group together to watch trashy TV shows. In the evening, they sleep in pods to hold their bones together. They often sneak out of the pods to have sex. When their bones are too squishy they are placed in “skeletons,” which are described as painful Iron Lungs. And, believe it or not, it is here that a deadly love triangle begins, which is even scarier than the melting bones. Font expertly spooks with such turns, overshadowing the strange with the familiar. Once again, it’s the everyday need for connection that haunts us most.
The ending short brings us back to the first story on male “blots.” This time the blot’s goal is to have sex with a woman so they can take the woman’s personal data with their penises (I kid you not) to send to the Russians. Intimacy is confronted in surprising ways throughout the collection: a God-like void comes to wipe out the globe, and all must choose who they want to spend eternity with; a man has a textbook codependent relationship, except it is with a house that requires special, demanding care; a loving family accepts their gay son, but also physically harm each other for fun. There’s the one where a head slowly grows out of the floor of a woman’s apartment. And the one that had me squeamishly laughing takes place in a world where sexual encounters revolve around the fetishizing of internal organs. If you are into speculative fiction, you will eat this one up. If you are not, just read one or two stories to admire the author’s skills.
I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.
Find all my book reviews at:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list…
https://books6259.wordpress.com/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review…
https://www.facebook.com/martie.neesr…
https://www.instagram.com/martie6947/
https://www.amazon.com/
https://twitter.com/NeesRecord\
May 4, 2022
15 short stories, sandwiched in the most perfect way by two that go together - “Out There” and “Big Sur”. Those two are such a highlight, but I thought the 13 in the middle also served to amplify their weird charm. "Moist House" is another standout. Most of these stories explore gender, particularly women’s place in society - and self-alienation - she seems to ask, how can we manage to find “personhood” within society’s constraints pressing upon us at every turn? She quotes Murakami as an inspiration in the last story which was absolute genius to me and really brought it all together.
The climax is in the first and last stories - about gorgeous (yet strange) robot men - “blots” who seduce women via a dating app - and it’s not entirely what you’d expect (or what I expected). I thought they were amazing.
A few notes on the others below -
“The Last Woman on Earth” and “Heart Seeks Brain” are both creative and poignant twists on the expectations placed upon women to fit an idealized standard.
“The Void Wife” - this follows a woman fleeing the apocalypse determined to retain herself and not to go into the afterlife forever attached to a man.
“Shelter” plays on the same angle of general distaste of a relationship, but this one turns even more terrifyingly strange.
“The Head in the Floor” is such a fun horror. It’s a perfect short story. There is a deeper analysis to be found here. Is it about relationships? Is it also about being challenged by intimacy? Or about technology watching us?
“Tahoe” and “Doe Eyes” both seem to be scary stories about how men can be easily enabled to do whatever they want
“The Bone Ward” is another highlight - it’s very creative, completely uncanny, and manages to also hold commentary on how patriarchal society views women in a disposable way as well as pits women against each other.
“The House’s Beating Heart” is so weird and creative
“A Scale Model of Gull Point” is amazing. It’s sort of strangely about artistic drives and inspiration. It’s about more than this but I can’t yet pinpoint it - this is such a weird and thought-provoking one.
“Dating a Somnambulist” is completely hilarious, Four perfect pages in which you are guaranteed to laugh out loud. I loved this one.
“Moist House” ok honestly - I don’t think I have ever laughed while being equally horrified in such a way by a short story. This one is SO good. I mean. really my mouth was agape in between laughing at the utter absurdity. Not to give it away, but a man develops a symbiotic attachment to a house he must keep “moist” at all costs - it’s really good and weird. Is it easier to be intimate with a house than a person?
Overall, this was such a great read - incredibly creative, unusual and uncanny, thought-provoking, and somehow often funny. I thought it was great, and I'm definitely interested in reading more by this author.
** almost a month later and still thinking about this one, adding as a 2022 favorite
The climax is in the first and last stories - about gorgeous (yet strange) robot men - “blots” who seduce women via a dating app - and it’s not entirely what you’d expect (or what I expected). I thought they were amazing.
A few notes on the others below -
“The Last Woman on Earth” and “Heart Seeks Brain” are both creative and poignant twists on the expectations placed upon women to fit an idealized standard.
“The Void Wife” - this follows a woman fleeing the apocalypse determined to retain herself and not to go into the afterlife forever attached to a man.
“Shelter” plays on the same angle of general distaste of a relationship, but this one turns even more terrifyingly strange.
“The Head in the Floor” is such a fun horror. It’s a perfect short story. There is a deeper analysis to be found here. Is it about relationships? Is it also about being challenged by intimacy? Or about technology watching us?
“Tahoe” and “Doe Eyes” both seem to be scary stories about how men can be easily enabled to do whatever they want
“The Bone Ward” is another highlight - it’s very creative, completely uncanny, and manages to also hold commentary on how patriarchal society views women in a disposable way as well as pits women against each other.
“The House’s Beating Heart” is so weird and creative
“A Scale Model of Gull Point” is amazing. It’s sort of strangely about artistic drives and inspiration. It’s about more than this but I can’t yet pinpoint it - this is such a weird and thought-provoking one.
“Dating a Somnambulist” is completely hilarious, Four perfect pages in which you are guaranteed to laugh out loud. I loved this one.
“Moist House” ok honestly - I don’t think I have ever laughed while being equally horrified in such a way by a short story. This one is SO good. I mean. really my mouth was agape in between laughing at the utter absurdity. Not to give it away, but a man develops a symbiotic attachment to a house he must keep “moist” at all costs - it’s really good and weird. Is it easier to be intimate with a house than a person?
Overall, this was such a great read - incredibly creative, unusual and uncanny, thought-provoking, and somehow often funny. I thought it was great, and I'm definitely interested in reading more by this author.
** almost a month later and still thinking about this one, adding as a 2022 favorite
June 29, 2023
I think Split Lip Magazine perfectly summed up the experience of reading these stories with their headline 'weird mundane'. Folk has a knack for making weird comfortable, easy to slip into, safe and sometimes even funny. When her lonely characters face hurdles and horrors I experienced them in a wry kind of technicolour.
artist: alex chinneck
title: from the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...
Split Lip Magazine's interview with the author...
https://splitlipthemag.com/interviews...
artist: alex chinneck
title: from the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...
Split Lip Magazine's interview with the author...
https://splitlipthemag.com/interviews...
Want to read
August 14, 2023Lexi said this does what Her Body And Other Parties thinks it's doing. I can't wait to compare them both.
August 11, 2022
I do not rate things 2 stars lightly. This book seems to think “speculative fiction” means everyone has an absolutely joyless existence, or, if they do have some happiness, that it must come to tragedy. I disagree; eerie, weird, and jarring premises do not automatically need to end poorly. I rated the first story 5 stars and then became disappointed that it was all the author was capable of in theme and execution.
I am struck over and over again by the female main characters, who are just facets of the same pitiful person who is spiteful of women who she perceives to have it better than her, people who are able to have functional relationships, and cannot understand why people seek actual meaningful connection with each other. Every action is coldly calculated and without emotion. If a woman does something kind, she is punished in some way. Women are repeatedly described in dehumanizing ways by the narration and the setups of these stories (especially the whole story that was a woman describing porn videos in increasingly edible ways). Many of them die. None of them really achieve anything. There is a lot of really unappealing sex that they seem to in no way enjoy that is uncomfortable to read (to be clear I love to read and write erotic books). Most are pitted against each other in disgusting ways.
I particularly hated the character in the Bone Ward story. I saw it described as love triangle; it was in fact a jealous woman committing heinous violence against a perceived rival whose crime was… being attractive and talented and kind, and having a man interested in being her friend, while the main character felt like she owned that man.
There is one story with a queer couple, two men, and their story is about violence both in the literal sense and in codependency that drives one to try and kill himself to show his love to the other, and explicitly to hurt his partner in a way that seems to go well beyond the established rules of the “game” they are playing. It ends ominously and negatively. Any other bare hints of mention of queer characters are not great.
This author seems to hate both other women and men so much that every story was tainted with it. Normally I would write this off as an affect or a choice in intention, but the level to which it pervaded every single text makes me feel it is a truth of the author’s own philosophy and life. I don’t think a person who wasn’t miserable could have written this whole book. One or two stories, sure, but not a full treatise on how to never experience joy.
When I was intrigued by the premise of a story it was often unfulfilled, or not really taken to any conclusion. The true horror of this book is how it puts everything else aside to be miserable.
I am struck over and over again by the female main characters, who are just facets of the same pitiful person who is spiteful of women who she perceives to have it better than her, people who are able to have functional relationships, and cannot understand why people seek actual meaningful connection with each other. Every action is coldly calculated and without emotion. If a woman does something kind, she is punished in some way. Women are repeatedly described in dehumanizing ways by the narration and the setups of these stories (especially the whole story that was a woman describing porn videos in increasingly edible ways). Many of them die. None of them really achieve anything. There is a lot of really unappealing sex that they seem to in no way enjoy that is uncomfortable to read (to be clear I love to read and write erotic books). Most are pitted against each other in disgusting ways.
I particularly hated the character in the Bone Ward story. I saw it described as love triangle; it was in fact a jealous woman committing heinous violence against a perceived rival whose crime was… being attractive and talented and kind, and having a man interested in being her friend, while the main character felt like she owned that man.
There is one story with a queer couple, two men, and their story is about violence both in the literal sense and in codependency that drives one to try and kill himself to show his love to the other, and explicitly to hurt his partner in a way that seems to go well beyond the established rules of the “game” they are playing. It ends ominously and negatively. Any other bare hints of mention of queer characters are not great.
This author seems to hate both other women and men so much that every story was tainted with it. Normally I would write this off as an affect or a choice in intention, but the level to which it pervaded every single text makes me feel it is a truth of the author’s own philosophy and life. I don’t think a person who wasn’t miserable could have written this whole book. One or two stories, sure, but not a full treatise on how to never experience joy.
When I was intrigued by the premise of a story it was often unfulfilled, or not really taken to any conclusion. The true horror of this book is how it puts everything else aside to be miserable.
April 26, 2023
following in the magical footsteps of machado, saunders, and moshfegh (ok these are all authors referenced in the pitch blurb but iT'S ACCURATE OK), folk's stories are about being human in the worst ways. we've got sentient & sinister houses ("moisturize meeeee"), tinder bots irl, dissatisfied wives, the last woman on earth (and still dealing with misogyny), a sleepwalking boyfriend who brings increasingly weirder things back to bed, sadomasochistic family gatherings, and oh god so much more. love love loved every story in this collection. pick this up in april 2022!!
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