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A Tree or a Person or a Wall: Stories [Paperback]

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  • Category: Books (Fiction)
  • Author:  Bell, Matt
  • Author:  Bell, Matt
  • ISBN-10:  1616955236
  • ISBN-10:  1616955236
  • ISBN-13:  9781616955236
  • ISBN-13:  9781616955236
  • Publisher:  Soho Press
  • Publisher:  Soho Press
  • Pages:  400
  • Pages:  400
  • Binding:  Paperback
  • Binding:  Paperback
  • Pub Date:  01-Sep-2016
  • Pub Date:  01-Sep-2016
  • SKU:  1616955236-11-SPLV
  • SKU:  1616955236-11-SPLV
  • Item ID: 100446742
  • List Price: $17.00
  • Seller: ShopSpell
  • Ships in: 2 business days
  • Transit time: Up to 5 business days
  • Delivery by: Nov 21 to Nov 23
  • Notes: Brand New Book. Order Now.

Here we have Matt Bell at his most inventive and uncanny: parents and children, murderers and monsters, wild renditions of the past, and stunning visions of the present, all of which build to a virtuoso reimagining of our world.

A 19th-century minister builds an elaborate motor that will bring about the Second Coming. A man with rough hands locks a boy in a room with an albino ape. An apocalyptic army falls under a veil of forgetfulness. The story of Red Riding Hood is run through a potentially endless series of iterations. A father invents an elaborate, consuming game for his hospitalized son. Indexes, maps, a checkered shirt buried beneath a blanket of snow: they are scattered through these pages as clues to mysteries that may never be solved, lingering evidence of the violence and unknowability of the world.

A Tree or a Person or a Wallbrings together Bell’s previously published shorter fiction—the story collectionHow They Were Foundand the acclaimed novellaCataclysm Baby—along with seven dark and disturbing new stories, to create a collection of singular power.Praise for A Tree or a Person or a Wall: Stories

A Chicago Review of Books Best of 2016

A specific kind of focused pain forms the language of Bell’s tales... These stories take “everyday” horrors like hoarding, missing children, and cultural unrest, and saturate them with the kind of rich, layered text that make the works of Tolkien and George R. R. Martin so enduring.
Los Angeles Review of Books

Both [explores] new worlds and [does] unexpected things with language, structure, and style along the way... telling stories of surreal visitations, obsessions, and moments when the nature of reality becomes decidedly ambiguous. They’re memorable and haunting in equal measure.
—Tobias Carroll for Tor.com

Bell joins a class oflS6

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