Droll Tales
In fourteen witty, surreal, and wildly original interrelated stories, Iris Smyles joyfully interrogates the paradoxes of life and language and gives us a new view of our world.
Welcome to the world of Droll Tales, in which reality is a mutually agreed-upon illusion, and life is painful, enigmatic, beautiful, and brief. With an oddball cast of characters who reappear in various guises, Smyles gives us a tour of an enchanted, absurd, off-kilter world with its own workings and ways of expression--one that overlaps our own.
A young suburban woman runs away to Europe to become a living statue, Mallarmé is at long last translated into pig Latin, a house full of surrealists compete for love on a reality TV show, a list of fortune cookie messages reveals the inner world of the young man employed to write them, and a story of love and betrayal is told through the sentence diagrams on a fifth grader's grammar test.
Romantic, dark, and ironic, Droll Tales is a book like none you have read. It is a philosophical vaudeville, a cabinet of curiosities, a puzzle in fourteen pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles's singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.
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Iris Smyles is the author of two previous books of fiction: Iris Has Free Time and Dating Tips for the Unemployed, which was a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her essays and stories have been published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vogue, BOMB, Paris Review Daily, The Baffler, and Best American Travel Writing, among other publications. She divides her time between New York City and Greece.
PRAISE FOR DROLL TALES
"Droll Tales is dark, surreal, and very funny, one of the best combinations a reader could ask for." --Roz Chast, author and illustrator of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
"Reading Droll Tales, I flashed on Milan Kundera and David Sedaris, before concluding that Iris Smyles is that rarest of birds, a gifted nut, an eccentric fabulist." --John Patrick Shanley, writer of "Moonstruck" and "Doubt"
"I am in awe of what a great great great great writers Iris Smyles is." --Patricia Marx, author of You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples
"A book full of wonders. Brilliant." --Frederic Tuten, author of Tintin in the New World
PRAISE FOR IRIS SMYLES
"Hilarious high jinks . . . instant favorite." --O, the Oprah Magazine
"Smyles is sharp, melancholy, and wickedly funny. She is unafraid to reveal and revel in her character's flaws because it is what makes them so achingly, relatably human." --Interview Magazine
"There are two kinds of people in this world, those without peanut allergies and those who cannot tolerate peanuts or any food produced or packaged in a facility that processes peanuts." Both will love this book." --Andrea Martin, actress ("SCTV," "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") and author of Andrea Martin's Lady Parts
"Often hilarious, often tinged with sadness, but always authentic." --Booklist
