Curator of the Extraordinary

Curator of the extraordinary, Amelia Gray creates worlds beyond imagination: absurd, funny, yet surprisingly believable. Her simplicity of tone and language combined with odd characters, settings, and events make the work accessible, yet somehow the depth lurks, resulting in moving, powerful pieces. A man living in a suitcase, a woman cutting off her toes so she can eat them, a tortoise visiting a dying hare, an armadillo and penguin at a bar, a woman on a date feeling pressured to eat hair, a man married to a knife, another to a frozen tilapia, a woman waking to find she's had yet another baby, the scenarios are refreshing, leaving one to wonder—look outside the box, anything can happen.

The prose is original, the dialogue sharp, the events leaving one gasping, possibly laughing, then a heart twinge, the language sticks, the events linger, the stories lodge themselves within you. Furthermore, each story has its own distinct angle, twist, character, or vision. Yet some seem to spin off each other. For instance, "Dinner" involves a scenario with Beth and Dave on a date, her debating whether to eat the hair he'd ordered, the story beginning with

When the waiter brought a plate of hair to the table alongside Beth's soup, it was difficult to be polite about it. Still, Beth felt the need to be polite, because it was a nice restaurant, and she was on a date for the first time in months, and with a guy she actually liked.

Later in the story, one learns that "He had pulled some strings for their reservation, after all, getting the two of them a table at the last moment, no doubt at some expense to his professional standing." The pun on strings, with the hair theme, is subtle, yet quite funny, and shows his sacrifice for her, leaving one wondering how far Beth will go in order to reciprocate. But the point here: an almost pigtail story of "Diner" becomes "Death of a Beast," where June has been reading about a "massive trichobezoar. Gastroenterologists removed the giant hairball from a girl on Thanksgiving morning. The hairball weighed ten pounds and was shaped like the stomach in which it had been lodged." Although the girl in this story eats her hair because of a mental disorder (Rapunzel Syndrome), the correlation between the stories is evident, the two stories inadvertently having dialogue between them.

Still, perhaps the most perplexing of the stories is "Beast," where Roger starts to think he smells like the biohazard waste from the plastic surgery office where he works. Further complicating his dilemma, he befriends his duplex neighbor, Olive, who works as a line cook at a vegetarian restaurant, cooking meat in the evenings, the smell seeping into Roger's apartment. Body parts become central to the story, and one senses that the story will take a yet odder turn, when Olive says to Roger, "You have a lovely collarbone." Furthermore, "She looked at him. 'Lymph nodes,' she said. 'And salivary glands.' She took a bit and chewed thoughtfully. 'They make chorizo with the lymph nodes and salivary glands of the pig. Cheeks, sometimes.'" When Olive decides to show him a tongue, the events turn, and Roger's doubts grow. "'It's from this freaked-out monastery where the monks cut out their own tongues to get closer to God. They dehydrate them and sell them for two thousand per. Luckily, I know a guy. I've been saving all year to get one. Apparently, they're like pate.'" Later lines sing and punch, like "Roger chewed thoughtfully. His own tongue touched the tongue he was eating. He felt strange" and "The bone was like raisins in a cake."

The tone in "The Suitcase" is equally as entertaining. When Claire notices Alex has not put his suitcase away for over two years and sees this as a lack of commitment, she confronts him, which instigates him to crawl in the suitcase and stay there. Ultimately, at baggage claim, when Chaire tries to smuggle Alex through...