Twelve Tales of Futility and Confusion

What fools! They crowd the pages of this stylish collection, peculiar as jungle birds, pitiful as lame dogs, bewildered or deluded; like us, blind and blindly striving. The worlds of these gently grotesque dreams and fairy stories have a way of tilting over, like some steady leak or sudden swell has swamped the boat of reason. A man is undone by the surpassing beauty of his pig. A bronze age king, faced with what might be a terrible insult, begins the construction of a gigantic ship. A tinker is compelled or fated to plant an unusual tree. Weak men, young lovers, singular children, lunatics, cultists, apostates, monsters. The writing is archly mannered, drily funny, melancholy, precise. You might find it insufferable, I don’t know. You know how Wes Anderson is polarizing? Maybe it’s something like that. Only one way to find out.