Unlucky Lucky Days

Inventive, disconcerting, and hilarious, these 73 tales of our Unlucky Lucky Days might well be termed Dr. Seuss for adults. They call to mind Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories as readily as they do Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, Rikki Ducornet's Butcher's Tales and Woody Allen's most literary writings. Braced on the shoulders of the fabulists, fantasists, absurdists, surrealists and satirists who came before him, Daniel Grandbois dredges up impossible meanings from the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as the animal, and serves them to us as if they were nothing more fantastic than a plate of eggs and ham.

"Brief, animist epiphanies — most shorter than a page — comprise Grandbois's folkloric debut. The frog of 'Greener Pastures' dreams of becoming an architect like his father, and shapes his dung hills into replicas of churches. The blind cat in 'The Teacher' decides on a career change, aided by an equally blind mouse. The growth on Aunt Mary's neck ('The Growth') appeared 'as random as the decay of an isotope in an old growth forest when no one is there to hear.' Absurdist and surreal, witty and ironical, Grandbois's observations make for pleasant grotesques: impressionistic ides fixes 'like the heads of soldiers... large enough to block passages against intruders.' (June)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Grandbois is a master of the double-edged word, of stories that both cut through the world like butter and double-back to saw themselves to bits." Brian Evenson

"These are funny, bizarre, moving stories — a pleasure to read." Lydia Davis

"Grandbois' trembling leaflets bring to life all the rejecta and detritus scattered in such silent and secretive array around us, recovering all we thought lost or dead." Eleni Sikelianos

"Animated by a wonderfully droll and fantastical imagination, these little stories are delicious." Rikki Ducornet

"Part fable, part creation myth...these stories conclude with riddles rather than platitudes....Many of these pieces are aware of how mischievous they are, of what fun they are having. The moral, or just as likely, the punch line, is out of reach. The result is stories that never condescend and always delight, as if making sense is overrated, a bad adult habit." Erica Wright, ForeWord Magazine

"These are funny, bizarre, moving stories-a pleasure to read."-Lydia Davis

"Grandbois is a master of the double-edged word, of stories that both cut through the world like butter and double-back to saw themselves to bits."-Brian Evenson

"Grandbois'trembling leaflets bring to life all the rejecta and detritus scattered in such silent and secretive array around us, recovering all we thought lost or dead."-Eleni Sikelianos

"Animated by a wonderfully droll and fantastical imagination, these little stories are delicious."-Rikki Ducornet

Praise for The Hermaphrodite (An Hallucinated Memoir):

"[A] collage of satire and slapstick, allegory and hallucination...an "art novel" in the fullest sense."-Marguerite Feitlowitz

"A modern space-time set of interconnected myths and stories . . . startling sets of shape shiftings and melting tableaus . . . elegantly precise . . . graceful . . . a work of art."-Ed Sanders

Inventive, disconcerting, and hilarious, these seventy-three tales of our Unlucky Lucky Daysmight well be termed Dr. Seuss for adults. They call to mind Rudyard Kipling's Just So Storiesas readily as they do Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, Rikki Ducornet's Butcher's Talesand Woody Allen's most literary writings. Braced on the shoulders of the fabulists, fantasists, absurdists, surrealists and satirists who came before him, Daniel Grandbois dredges up impossible meanings from the mineral and plant kingdoms, as well as the animal, and serves them to us as if they were nothing more fantastic than a plate of eggs and ham.

Daniel Grandbois'other book, The Hermaphrodite (An Hallucinated Memoir), with forty original woodcuts by Argentine printmaker Alfredo Benavidez Bedoya, is forthcoming from Green Integer in fall 2008. Grandbois'writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Fiction, Boulevard, Sentence, Del Sol Review, and the anthologies Freak Lightningand Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years, among many others. Also a musician, Daniel plays or has played in three of the pioneering bands of "The Denver Sound:"Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Tarantella, and Munly.

Daniel Grandbois was born in Minnesota and raised in Colorado. His other book, The Hermaphrodite (An Hallucinated Memoir), with forty original woodcuts by Argentine printmaker Alfredo Benavidez Bedoya and translated into Spanish by Liliana Valenzuela, is forthcoming from Green Integer in fall 2008. Grandbois' writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Fiction, Boulevard, Sentence, Del Sol Review, and the anthologies Freak Lightning and Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years, among others. Also a musician, Daniel plays or has played in three of the pioneering bands of "The Denver Sound:" Slim Cessna's Auto Club, Tarantella, and Munly