Novelties & Souvenirs : Collected Short Fiction

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: John Crowley is one the best and most underappreciated writers alice. His talent is comparable to that of William Trevor, John Banville, or Calvino. The stories in this collection are uniformly powerful and ingenious, incredibly clever especially when they start out under the guise of genre stories and become something much, much more, like the one about Virginia Woolf's visit, which manages in a few short pages to say something universal about the nature of time (and has an impact as powerful as, say, Amis's "Time's Arrow," which took a whole novel to make its point). I strongly encourage anyone who loves innovative literature and deep, engaging prose to read this book (and Crowley's other work, as well).