Aimee's on a bender

Pal Stephani loaned me Aimee Bender's 1998 short story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Ms. Bender has a deceptively simple style--the stories have the feel of fairy tales or even Aesop's fables. But the landscape they inhabit includes a mermaid and an imp in high school, a hole where a stomach should be, a nymphomaniac librarian (very appealing!), a devolving lover, a ruby that turns the ocean red, a man who deforms himself into a hunchback, a woman who gives birth to her mother, a backpack made of stone, and, well, some other stuff, too. Weird, funny, serious, light, deep, smart, contradictory, confusing, cockeyed and dead-on, Bender is on to something. Or on something. Then I got to thinking about pal Stephani. I mean, it is her book. And she thought I'd like it. Hmmm.