Helen Phillips. (2016). Some Possible Solutions: Stories. Henry Holt and Co.

Helen Phillips. 2016. Some Possible Solutions: Stories. Henry Holt and Co.

Helen Phillips, Some Possible Solutions: Stories. Henry Holt and Co, 2016.

Helen Phillips. Some Possible Solutions: Stories. Henry Holt and Co, 2016.

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9. • value: Science Fiction
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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Phillips, Helen
   • bioText: Helen Phillips is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and the Italo Calvino Prize and more. She is the author of the widely acclaimed The Beautiful Bureaucrat. Her debut collection And Yet They Were Happy was named a notable book by The Story Prize. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Electric Literature, and The New York Times. An assistant professor of creative writing at Brooklyn College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children.
   • name: Helen Phillips

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Some Possible Solutions: Stories

fullDescription

In a spine-tingling new collection, the "unique"(NPR) and "wickedly funny" (New York Times) Helen Phillips offers an idiosyncratic series of "what-ifs" about our fragile human condition.
Some Possible Solutions offers an idiosyncratic series of "What ifs": What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you?
Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world. In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers—and with Phillips' characteristic smarts and imagination, we see that no one is quite who they appear.
By turns surreal, witty, and perplexing, these marvelous stories are ultimately a reflection of our own reality and of the big questions that we all face. Who are we? Where do we fit? Phillips is a true original and a treasure.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven
   • content: "This stunning collection establishes Helen Philips as one of the most interesting and talented writers working today. In atmosphere and setting, her stories are often reminiscent of Kafka and Atwood, yet her voice and style are entirely her own. A fascinating, unsettling, and beautifully written work."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
   • content: "Helen Phillips sings like a Siren on the page (if a Siren also had a killer sense of humor). The short stories in Some Possible Solutions feature doppelgangers and sister-savants, impossible staircases and surreal city parks; they swing open like doors onto rich, strange worlds, which, on closer inspection, reveal themselves to be our own...These tales are true originals, shining their eerie, lovely lights on the water and asking questions that linger."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
   • content: "Things happen that cannot happen. Marriages, motherhood, dinner parties, the future -- Helen Phillips shows us the uncanny seams of ordinary lives and wishes. What is the purpose of stories as strange, as lovely, as unsettling as these? There's the joy the reader takes in Phillips's sentences, of course, and her way of seeing. But there's also the sense that we have been invited on a desperately needed tour of our own dreams, nightmares, premonitions in which Phillips will be our guide. I recommend the experience to any and all -- this is an essential collection."
4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     March 7, 2016
     High concepts and sly emotion animate this solid collection of allegorical fiction from the author of And Yet They Were Happy and The Beautiful Bureaucrat. In “The Knowers,” a wife learns the precise date of her death via a kind of morbid ATM, then reluctantly divulges the information to her husband. A young mother moves to a town of eerie look-alikes in “The Doppelgängers,” where she eventually breast-feeds a child that bears an uncanny resemblance to her own. In “The Joined,” the world watches with envy as astronauts physically fuse with an alien race, achieving a blissful mind-body symbiosis not available to humanity. The last two stories are the collection’s best: the narrator of “The Wedding Stairs” finds a life’s worth of embarrassments have manifested as stains on her gown, and in “Contamination Generation,” a father wrestles with inadequacy in the shadow of his neighbor’s mansion. Among the other stories of wifedom and motherhood, this final glimpse into the male psyche offers a feel of the fantastic, of the playfulness and discovery that characterizes the collection as a whole. Agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 1, 2016
     The short stories in this darkly absorbing collection remind us of the hope and humanity, the warmth, joy, and love that can be found in even the bleakest circumstances. One of the many remarkable things about Phillips' fiction is that, even as she conjures unsettlingly grim dystopian futures, which seem to be an unfortunate extension of today's urban reality, or fixes her focus on untidy aspects of the here and now, she reveals something essential, enduring, and glitteringly beautiful about our most personal relationships: the ways our families (our husbands and wives; our children) can offer us comfort and safety, humanity, and love in a cold, uncaring world. She did it in her debut novel, The Beautiful Bureaucrat (2015), and she does it again in several of the 18 stories in this darkly delicious collection. In "The Knowers," a story that is especially redolent of Phillips' novel, a woman opts, over her husband's objection, to learn the precise date of her own death: "April 17, 2043," the character muses. "The knowledge heightened my life. The knowledge burdened my life. I regretted knowing. I was grateful to know." "The Doppelgangers" captures the terrifying wonders of first-time motherhood--the ways it reroutes a woman's loyalties and fundamentally redefines her. In "Contamination Generation," Phillips brings us a couple trying to raise their 5-year-old daughter with a sense of nature's joy and wonder in a cement-hard city landscape, a world in which only the wealthy--like the rich family next door--have private lawns and in which the "grass for the masses" at the city's botanic gardens (reached via two buses and the subway) may be gazed at but not walked, sat, lain, or played upon. This young family may not have a lush, air-purified backyard with a swimming pool, like their neighbors, but their shared love, the delight they take in each other's company, and the thoughtful things they do to help one another muddle through make them rich indeed. Phillips' sneakily optimistic stories are all about finding hope in even the bleakest situations. "The thing is, the organism survives no matter what," the dad who narrates "Contamination Generation" observes; "the organism even thrives." Phillips proves yet again that she is an intuitive, emotionally resonant writer who is willing to consider some of life's biggest questions and offer, yes, a few possible solutions.

     COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 15, 2016
     A woman visits an ATM to learn the date of her death. Time abruptly stands still at the end of a boring dinner party. A husband finally learns the truth about his alien children in a moment of great need. Phillips' (The Beautiful Bureaucrat, 2015) wonderfully inventive collection of 19 short stories is a wealth of alternate realities, from worlds cleansed of climate or devoid of creatures to times of space travel and the absolution of gender differences. But while many scenarios will be altogether bizarre, such as the girl who can suddenly see straight through skin to sinew and bone, others have a distinctly recognizable tone, such as when a new mother struggles to adapt to her recent life changes. Regardless of the degree of familiarity, in each story, Phillips explores themes of relationships and identity. As characters navigate their distinctive, often dystopian settings, they struggle to define motherhood, sisterhood, or womanhood and reconcile their own needs with those of others in their lives. This thought-provoking and deeply imaginative story collection is an uncommon gem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

popularity

71

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In a spine-tingling new collection, the "unique"(NPR) and "wickedly funny" (New York Times) Helen Phillips offers an idiosyncratic series of "what-ifs" about our fragile human condition.
Some Possible Solutions offers an idiosyncratic series of "What ifs": What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you?
Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world. In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the...

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