The Conductor and Other Tales

The stories in this book read like dreams: You're thrown into a world or a train of thought, brilliantly described, and just before you can uncover any overt meaning behind it, you're ripped from that thought train, immediately finding yourself on a brand new one, just as fantastic and imaginative as the last.

Jean Ferry's "The Conductor and Other Tales" is quite a unique little collection. Ferry's stories might best be described as literary pranks - he usually maintains a coherent narrative just long enough to lure you onto the rug he's about to pull out from under you. But Ferry's humor is tempered by a certain intimacy and sadness - despite the narratives veering into dreamlike fantasy, it often feels as if Ferry is confessing his own disappointments, shortcomings, and fears. The obvious comparison is Kafka, although Kafka obsessed over unknown or inadvertent wrongs whereas Ferry is more concerned with lethargy and exhaustion. But Ferry's style is wholly his own; his stories are brief, self-contradictory, and often vaudevillian in setup, turning on wordplay that is fast and clever. If Ferry had been more prolific - or even just more serious about his writing career - I believe he would be esteemed alongside Kafka, Calvino, and Borges.

a splendid delight of everything I didn’t know I wanted to read

A+