The collection begins with “Free Ham,” a house-fire story that ends with an image short story buffs might recognize as an homage to Raymond Carver’s story “Why Don’t You Dance?” :“everything that is supposed to be inside is outside. In the case of Bertino’s debut collection, they send us into the sometimes surreal but always convincing world of skillfully drawn plots, complex metaphors, and quirky-serious wordplay. But allusions, in good hands, send us forward, not back into something we already know. This type of pleasure can be dangerous, because it comes freighted with the potential for self-congratulation it threatens to insulate the audience along with the author. Marie-Helene Bertino’s Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning story collection, Safe as Houses, offers, among many pleasures, the readerly pleasure of allusions both cultural and literary.
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