Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman’s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.
"[Bender] is Hemingway on an acid trip; her choices are twisted, both ethereal and surprisingly weighty. . . . Terrifyingly lovely." –Los Angeles Times “New, exciting, harsh, rugged and unyielding. . . . Every sentence in [Willful Creatures] is a fresh surprise.” –The Washington Post"Contemporary fairy tales, cushioned by goofy humor and a deep tenderness for her characters, that aren't always as dark or as sinister as they initially appear." –The New York Times Book Review “These are stories that you'll read with a sense of discovery and wonder. You'll re-read them just for their beauty.” –The Denver Post "To curl up with an Aimee Bender story is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place. . . . What a treat to spend 15 stories in Bender's vast and wonderfully unhinged imagination.” –Entertainment Weekly “I am a long-standing, passionate fan of Aimee Bender’s stories. Her images explode, her words ignite. Watching her imagination catch fire remains a sustaining joy in my readerly life.”—Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
