I probably would've liked these stories more if I'd read them separately instead of in a single volume. There were a few I liked, but mostly I found it difficult to differentiate between the characters from story to story, because most of them were screwed up teenagers of indeterminate gender. And I know that my opinion of the book was immediately swayed by the Miranda July (ewwww) quote on the cover (swayed to the point where I almost just didn't read it). I really like Leopard Arms, though. I

I stumbled upon this little volume at the Brooklyn Library, entranced by its gorgeous cover art, Miranda July props, and the first page of prose, so unique and lovely. That first story, also titled Farewell Navigator, was like reading magic. It was tender, subtle, tragic, and weird, all qualities I love discovering in short fiction. Heart Sockets was also wonderful, with a nice added touch of surrealism. Most of the other stories were only alright. There are no less than three that take place in...

I heard the author read from the book at Elliott Bay around a year ago. I really enjoyed it and regretted not buying it but fortunately I recently found a used copy. It was as good as I remembered. Pretty much all the short stories end without a resolute resolution of conflicts or a dénouement, things are still a little up in the air for the characters. I could see how this might bother some people but it worked well for me.

My second read by Zumas- Red Clocks being my first- and I'm hooked. Her strange mix of characters- a voyeur gargoyle, an animal rescuer wet nurse, a witch hunter/scorned husband...She has a way to pull you into these madcap protagonists'stories...three stories gave you a bit of the group home/rehab/psych institution "One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest" vibe- I didn't mind. One story had the small town girl leaves her small mapless unGPSable location to travel theme- tired story line maybe but it w...

By Marc Weingarten...Many of the young folks in Leni Zumas’ stories are... trying to divorce themselves from burdensome emotional ties and consequent interference with self-actualization. It’s a testament to Zumas’ skill that the book, which contains dope addicts and stories set in loony bins, doesn’t devolve into a Girl, Interrupted for the pitchfork.com generation. She’s too smart to fall into that trap.The title story tips us off to Zumas’ knack for crawling inside the heads of protagonists w...

Disturbing, grotesque, and very sad.I was assigned "Farewell Navigator" for an English class, and while Zumas' writing was gripping enough to keep me glued and empathizing with every character, it also required three readings to really get a good feel for it. Her writing seems so typical of modern shorts: so heavy on the reach for edginess it becomes trite. The use of gratuitous gore and morbidity, for example, has become pretty clichéd. Much of her descriptions left me feeling uncomfortable, vi...

Fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, and Karen Joy Fowler, take note: You'll love this collection of quirky, feminist, speculative-ish short stories.

This is one of the very best books to come out this year.

I read this book a few years after I moved to the United States from Italy. I mostly read books in my mother language, Italian, and Farewell Navigator changed forever my way of reading in English, deepening my awareness of the music of the prose. It blew me away for many reasons: language, style, degree and quality of invention, and an awareness of the body through language that swings from gloom to irony, often venturing into the (alas!) not too often explored territories of the grotesque. Fare...

I enjoyed this collection very much. Zumas writes with precision. Her stories are delightfully idiosyncratic, and a little uncomfortable.

Everything that made me love Red Clocks is evident here. A wonderful collection of stories in which a familiar cast of outsiders (familiar because we are usually ignoring them) are given such loving, honest, and heartfelt voices that our inner outsiders can't help but resonate in exquisite outsidery bliss.

This book blew me away when i finally got to reading it. The way she weaves odd, strange characters into situations that are at once interesting and make you feel better about your life and make me as a writer want to explore the unconventional side of charactering that much more. Stylistically the language is poetic and original, the lack of quotation marks i found refreshing, and she experimented as well in plot developing and what to focus in on.My favorite stories in the collection: leopard

You'll find stories set out in traditional form and some that are not. Often times when an author is trying to write a story and avoid the 'normal' way of writing (you know, paragraphs, dialog, etc), it comes off as trying too hard. Zumas' work doesn't come off that way at all. In fact the only downside to her storytelling is the occasional touch of magical realism in an otherwise normal setting--as if the story she was telling needed that embellishment. This is a good collection, the title stor...

This was a bit of a pleasant surprise, actually.... I really love Open City as a magazine, which makes it so frustrating that their books often disappoint me, feeling more like gratitude to hipster friends than really good reading. This was a lot better than that, thankfully-- the stories here are "linguistically active," which is to say a good part of the pleasure of reading them is the way the sentences sound, the way they structure themselves into these sentences that you read two and three t...

These stories read like wonderful gifts to the lonely, lovelorn, isolated outsider teen/young adult we all were. Maybe we're older now, but from word one, we're swept back into that precarious void between teen and trying to be adult, and damn, if it isn't skin crawling funny, sweet, romantic in the way only an unrequited crush bearer knows-all the beauty and tragedy of people isolated from their heart's desire, from the world, from themselves. I was reminded of the Joy Division song 'Isolation'...

This is the worst book I've read in a long time. The stories are full of themselves, dripping with this "ooh, I'm so deep because I write about X" feeling, yet they're so fake, like the author obviously has no clue what she's talking about. A good example would be the one about a girl who supposedly comes from a town so small it's not on any map, past or present, yet the town not only has a YMCA, it had two high schools until recently! A town as small as the one this girl is supposed to come fro...

In this debut novel published by Portland’s Tin House Books, a woman in her 30’s mourns the death of her sister, the loss of her first love, and the dissolution of her almost-famous punk band. The narrator of The Listeners is an unattractive, anorexic, hirsute, chain-smoking, hard drinking vegetarian with synesthesia. She hangs out with people named: Fod, Mert, Cam, Geck, Jupiter, Dagger, Riley a.k.a. Coyote, Pine, and Uncle Seven. The games she plays include: Nakedies, Curious, and Wake The Sis...

I had the privilege of meeting Leni Zumas in a creative wriing class and I led the discussion on this work. Zumas is a really good writer, on her way to becoming something more by creating more original work that could fall into a category all its own. What I do remember from her Q&A is that she just collected a group of short stories, I believe these were all she had written at the time, and agreed to have them published to make the book. The recurring themes throughout were not realized by her...

Grotesque and gorgeous writing with an Angela Carter flair. In the first story, the son of two blind people eats his own scabs and suffers shame when his mother makes a pass at his only friend. The story captures the loneliness and familial obligation in a powerful manner. At times I was uncomfortable with the images in this collection, a good thing. Zumas is willing dig equally into the ugly and the beautiful mines of life.

Currently, I'm actually a little disturbed by this book. Much like Miranda July (who's quoted praising this book on the cover), the characters are disturbed, have things like compassion and coherence missing from their personality, and come of a bit sociopathic a lot of the time. That said, I know I enjoy those types of characters.Ah well. Let's see how it goes.