Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
Alan DeNiro
trade paperback / Ebook
1931520178 · $16 · July 1, 2006
Preorder:
-- Paypal
-- mail order
-- Powells
-- Fictionwise
-- Our Local Bookstore
-- Your Local Bookstore
A Book Sense Pick:
SKINNY DIPPING IN THE LAKE OF THE DEAD: Stories, by Alan DeNiro "This is a great debut collection of loopy, off-the-wall, and still-somehow-packing-emotional-weight stories; DeNiro can weld words into some mighty strange configurations."
--Caleb Wilson, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Nashville, TN
- Interview by John Scalzi.
- Read a couple of the stories in a funsize PDF edition.
- Crawford Award finalist.
About the Book
2006 Longlist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is Minneapolis-based poet and writer Alan DeNiro's wide-ranging and assured debut fiction collection.
DeNiro's stories have been published in the most forward-looking magazines including Fence, Crowd, One Story, Strange Horizons, and 3rd Bed.
These stories skitter sideways across literary and genre fiction categories, using the toolbox of genres like science fiction and fantasy to grapple with issues of identity, family, gender, and politics. DeNiro is frequently funny, surreal, or slapstick, but his stories also connect with readers on an emotional level, in unexpected and surprising ways. Even in the oddest of DeNiro's stories, his characters are real people grappling with real relationships, real heartbreaks, the small, cruel, pinprick absurdities of a universe which is larger and stranger than most writers ever realize.
A MAN LOSES his leg in a war, and a field doctor sews on a fairy tale in its place. A woman excavates her living room in order to discover what has become of her marriage. The Byzantine army invades a small college town. Giants move in next door. A boy in a town called Suddenly falls in love with a girl who lives in the Lake of the Dead. The secret history of Erie -- past, present, and future -- is revealed.
Our Byzantium
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
If I Leap
The Fourth
The Centaur
Cuttlefish
The Caliber
The Excavation
A Keeper
Fuming Woman
The Friendly Giants
Quiver
Child Assassin
The Exchanges
Salting the Map
Home of theInterview on Ideomancer
"Smart and affecting."
-- Locus (Notable Books)"Maybe the future of sf is Alan DeNiro. The title story here, set in twenty-third-century Pennsylvania, is its nameless-till-the-last-sentence narrator's university-application essay, numbered footnotes and all, which explains why not to expect him on campus anytime soon; he is in love and considering getting gills. Maybe DeNiro is the future of alternate history: in "Our Byzantium," a college town is invaded by horse-and-chariot-led soldiers who demolish cars, wheelchairs, and other machines; reestablish Greek as the lingua franca; and otherwise conquer. He could be fantasy's tomorrow, too, if the offhandedness of the impossible transformations in "The Cuttlefish," "The Centaur," "The Excavation," and "If I Leap" catches on. In "The Fourth" and "A Keeper," DeNiro is one of the most powerful, least partisan prophets of consumerist totalitarianism. "Salting the Map" confounds the distinction between artifice and reality as deftly and daftly as Andrew Crumey's Pfitz (1997) and Zoran Zivkovic's Impossible Stories (2006). The long closer, "Home of the," about Erie, Pennsylvania, now and then, is as laconic and associative as its title is elliptic. Refreshing, imaginative, funny-scary stuff."
-- Ray Olson, Booklist"Thoughtful, ambitious writing and truly transformative reading."
-- Small Spiral Notebook"A commitment to experimental structure and oddball elements provides this debut collection's consistency.... The collection argues for DeNiro as a writer to watch."
-- Publishers Weekly"Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead is a thrill ride. Men jump from buildings and walk away, Assassins are hired to murder novels, Byzantines spring from the hills and sack college towns. On each page Alan DeNiro performs feats of acrobatic skill, holding the edge with remarkable control. He has created a brand new world, and I believe every word of it."
-- Hannah Tinti (Animal Crackers)"I'm not ordinarily an editor, so finding stories for the first six issues of Fence magazine was a guilty pleasure, and the subsequent work by formerly unknown Fence writers like Kelly Link and Julia Slavin has made me look like a prognosticator, or maybe an annoying drunk guy on a streak at a casino. Now here's Alan DeNiro, whose "Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead" was always my favorite. I'm thrilled to see him in bookstores at last."
-- Jonathan Lethem (Fortress of Solitude)"Alan DeNiro's stories move in unexpected ways into unexpected places -- up in the air, under the water, out of this world. He has a gift for precise language and poetic logic, his own unique sort of circus realism. Sharp, smart, and completely original, this is a lively, lovely collection from a memorable talent."
-- Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club)"Reading Alan DeNiro's new collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, made me feel like a dog that twists its head a bit to the side on hearing a whistle too high for humans to hear. The dog is perplexed and intrigued by the sound -- it knows where it's coming from but not really. Familiar enough, but maybe not. So too with these strong, out of kilter stories. DeNiro blows his own distinctly different sounding whistle and once you've heard it, you can't help but stop and take real notice."
-- Jonathan Carroll (Glass Soup)"The wholly original, carefully crafted tales that comprise Alan Deniro's Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead are like colorful pinatas full of live scorpions -- playful, unexpected, and deadly serious."
-- Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass)Interesting Things:
On the web:
- Interviews:
- New story: "Meet the Elms", Journal of Mythic Arts
- SF stories:
Credits
- Cover images © Ellen Klages (Lead Men) and Jupiter Images.
Download cover for print.- Download author photo for print.
Author photo credit: Maria Erikson.The following stories originally appeared in slightly different form in the following publications:
Our Byzantium, Polyphony 3 (Wheatland Press)
Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, Fence, Vol.2, No.2
If I Leap, Altair, 6/7
The Centaur, Spoiled Ink, July 2005
Cuttlefish, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, 8
The Caliber, Santa Monica Review, Fall 2002
The Excavation, Minnesota Monthly, June 2001
A Keeper, Electric Velocipede, 6
Fuming Woman, Trampoline (Small Beer Press)
The Friendly Giants, 3rd Bed, 4
Child Assassin, One Story, 22
The Exchanges, Crowd
Salting the Map, Fortean Bureau, 17"The Fourth", "Quiver", and "Home of the" appear here for the first time.
Alan DeNiro's Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead readings and signings (Contact us if you're interested in getting Alan in to read):
May 18-20 -- BookExpo America, Washington, DC
26-29 -- WisCon, Madison, WI
July 7-9 -- Readercon 17, Burlington, MA
10 (Monday)-- Amherst Books, 8 Main Street, Amherst, MA 01002 413.256.1547 -- 800.503.5865
-- with LCRW 18 launch party
11 (Tuesday) -- Porter Square Books, Porter Square Shopping Center, 25 White Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 · (617) 491-2220
-- with Theodora Goss (In the Forest of Forgetting)
18, 7 PM -- Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Avenue S, Minneapolis, MN 55408. (612) 822-4611-- reception afterward
August: 11-13 -- Diversicon, Bloomington, MN
19 -- 1-2 PM (Signing only) -- Northern Lights Books and Gifts, Duluth, MN
29, 6:30 pm, Dreamhaven Books, Minneapolis, MN
October 27-28 -- Loft Festival for fiction writers, Minneapolis, MNCheck for more.
