Dangerous Laughter-Thirteen Stories: SSC

✍ Scribed by Millhauser, Steven

• Book ID: 100632262
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; Alfred A. Knopf
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 147 KB
• Series: Vintage Contemporaries
• Edition: 1st ed
• Category: Fiction
• City: New York
• ISBN: 030726873X

✦ Synopsis

The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as "Cat 'n' Mouse" reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils --a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. Part one, "Vanishing Acts," features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend's troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into "the kingdom of forbidden things." Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two's "Impossible Architectures," where domes enclose whole cities, and a king's master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. Finally, "Heretical Histories" presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. "A Precursor of the Cinema" proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing "The Wizard of West Orange" a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch -- but success brings disturbing consequences.

✦ Subjects

FICTION -- General