While the story joins the small but interesting tradition of fiction about what we might call crypto-TV – other examples come to mind from Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, and Daniel Pinkwater – it opens up in unexpected ways that have nothing to do with nostalgia. In fact, it’s almost misleading to claim there are only twelve stories here, since the lead story alone, the Hugo and Nebula winner “Two Truths and a Lie”, embeds whole shards of other tales: the habitual fabrications of the protagonist Stella, the shadowy backstory of the hoarder whose massively cluttered house she agrees to help clean out, most of all the cryptic tales told by the creepy Stella appeared on as a child.
Lost Places, Sarah Pinsker ( Small Beer 978-1-61873-199-9, $17.00, 288pp, tp) May 2023.Īs with Valente, much of the appeal of Sarah Pinsker’s stories, 12 of which are collected in Lost Places, is her contagious enthusiasm for story in all its forms – not just short stories, fables, and fairy tales, but tacky old kids’ TV shows, improvised campfire tales, urban legends, mysterious ancient ballads, fading memories, even compulsive lying.
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