Design flaw : stories / Hugh Sheehy.

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Title:

Author:

Sheehy, Hugh, 1979- author.

ISBN:

9781946724557

Physical Description:

199 pages ; 22 cm

Abstract:

"These are tales of seekers, often damaged, who find themselves caught up in skewed realities, facing lurking threats, violent deaths, strange entities, and alienating technologies. Confronted with unsettling, escalating, circumstances, the disparate cast of characters are driven toward self-revelation and perverse moments of poignancy. A troubled high schooler traps a peer in an underground storage space. A traumatized felon returns home to rob the man who molested him as a child. A videogame help-line operator suspects a regular caller, obsessed with a disturbing role-playing game, of real-life misdeeds. In the title story, an unhappy couple adopts a "designer animal," a genetic hybrid created to be the perfect pet. But the "grot" makes trouble in the neighborhood, becoming emblematic of a deeper problem. 'Something is wrong with the world,' the narrator's husband explains. 'A design flaw. It's so thoroughly corrupted, I'm not sure how to fix it.' Inventive and unpredictable, these thirteen stories are wholly immersive, showing Sheehy at his captivating best."-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Short stories, American -- 21st century.

Short stories. (OCoLC)fst01117043

Genre:

Science fiction. (OCoLC)fst01726489

Short stories. (OCoLC)fst01726740

Thrillers (Fiction) (OCoLC)fst01726755

Short stories.

Thrillers (Fiction)

Science fiction.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Adult Fiction Book Paperback	120791002966604	F SHE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Hugh Sheehy's riveting new collection draws heavily from the genres of horror, mystery, science fiction, and myth.

These are tales of seekers, often damaged, who find themselves caught up in skewed realities, facing lurking threats, violent deaths, strange entities, and alienating technologies. Confronted with unsettling, escalating, circumstances, the disparate cast of characters are driven toward self-revelation and perverse moments of poignancy.

A troubled high schooler traps a peer in an underground storage space. A traumatized felon returns home to rob the man who molested him as a child. A videogame help-line operator suspects a regular caller, obsessed with a disturbing role-playing game, of real-life misdeeds. In the title story, an unhappy couple adopts a "designer animal," a genetic hybrid created to be the perfect pet. But the "grot" makes trouble in the neighborhood, becoming emblematic of a deeper problem. "Something is wrong with the world," the narrator's husband explains. "A design flaw. It's so thoroughly corrupted, I'm not sure how to fix it."

Inventive and unpredictable, these thirteen stories are wholly immersive, showing Sheehy at his captivating best.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Sheehy (The Invisibles) delivers a dark and dazzling collection pocked with surface tension and an undercurrent of menace. The bewitching title story chronicles a troubled married couple who adopt a "designer animal," part monkey and part cat, who is soon accused of mutilating neighborhood animals. The son in "Amontillado" laments his aging mother's declining mental agility while attending the funeral of a childhood bully. A man in "Demonology, or Gratitude" takes in a hard-partying woman, falls in love with her, then watches her self-destruct from abusing various drugs. The good Samaritan driver in "First Responder" seeks only to help an increasingly menacing hitchhiker he meets at a gas station, but winds up getting so much more than he expected. Closing out the collection is the thoughtful "Modern Wonders," about a computer interface that accesses users' memories and shows them uncomfortable truths about themselves. Artfully imagined and written with a distinctly devilish edge, these beguiling yarns plumb the depths of humanity and explore how human behavior can be twisted and modified by science. Often murky and mysterious, with some only a few pages long, Sheehy's curious tales never fail to enchant and entertain. (Nov.)

Booklist Review

In this eclectic, second short-story collection, Sheehy (The Invisibles, 2012) draws on the genres of horror, fantasy, and sf, blending speculative and literary styles. Themes of identity and belonging emerge in several of the stories. In the collection's title story, a couple adopts a genetically engineered hybrid animal called a grot. Despite the sf elements woven throughout, the story focuses on how the grot is reflective of its owner's psyche, and how it impacts the couple's relationship both with themselves and with the outside world. Other stories in the collection, such as "Severed Hands," lack any sort of speculative element and instead offer a look at human choices and how people deal with the fallout from unfortunate circumstances. Some, such as "First Responder," end right before what feels like a significant or climactic moment. In this collection, Sheehy has assembled stories spotlighting complex characters as they struggle with events both real and imagined and what that tells us about human nature.