With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut short story collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in “The New Yorker,” a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by “blots,” preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection.
Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.
This collection of stories was a wild ride. Part dystopian part sci fi, it would likely appeal to anyone who loves the weirdness of shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Also, as someone who loves Shirley Jackson, some of the stories in here definitely had tones of similarity to some of her more out there stories as well. I listened to the audiobook personally and really enjoyed the varying narrators who changed depending on the story and protagonist. There were definitely some stories that didn’t exactly appeal to me, but the majority of them were really captivating and interesting.
Happy reading!
The Wandering Wordsmith 