{"product_id":"droll-tales-9781933527611","title":"Droll Tales","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn fourteen witty, surreal, and wildly original interrelated stories, Iris Smyles joyfully interrogates the paradoxes of life and language and gives us a new view of our world.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWelcome to the world of \u003cem\u003eDroll Tales, \u003c\/em\u003ein which reality is a mutually agreed-upon illusion, and life is painful, enigmatic, beautiful, and brief. With an oddball cast of characters who reappear in various guises, Smyles gives us a tour of an enchanted, absurd, off-kilter world with its own workings and ways of expression--one that overlaps our own.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA young suburban woman runs away to Europe to become a living statue, Mallarmé is at long last translated into pig Latin, a house full of surrealists compete for love on a reality TV show, a list of fortune cookie messages reveals the inner world of the young man employed to write them, and a story of love and betrayal is told through the sentence diagrams on a fifth grader's grammar test.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRomantic, dark, and ironic, \u003cem\u003e Droll Tales\u003c\/em\u003e is a book like none you have read. It is a philosophical vaudeville, a cabinet of curiosities, a puzzle in fourteen pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles's singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Turtle Point Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/21\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781933527611\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 304","brand":"Iris Smyles","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42077518626997,"sku":"9781933527611","price":16.11,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_2d1f54a5-2435-4034-ad32-a5f3f55ac9e4.jpg?v=1650956778","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/droll-tales-9781933527611","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}