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The 15 stories in Aimee Bender's new collection, The Colour Master, offer a rainbow of worlds for the reader to explore. Combining fairy tales, folklore and magic realism, the US author gives a fresh perspective on the sagas of modern living. A disparate cast of characters grapple with painful experiences, their stories playing on the unpredictable paths and dreamlike rationale of reality.
We meet ogres who eat their own children, a couple who engage in erotic roleplay to mask an unhappy relationship, a young man who wants to get punched in the face and a fake Nazi who is utterly convinced of the destructive powers of his own imagination.
Bender is best known for her novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, but a return to the short-story form gives this versatile and experimental writer the room to really shine. Or, as one of her characters puts it, "We did not know what we were capable of. The lid was off."
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