The Man Who Took a Bite Out of His Wife and Other Stories

Pushing the limits of literary fantasy, this astonishing first collection marks the debut of a brilliantly subversive new writer. Surreal and audacious, Bev Jafek's writing brings to mind the fantastic short fiction of Borges, Boyle and Calvino - exhibiting an imagination the likes of which is rarely seen. Many of the nine stories have already won the author critical acclaim ranging from The Pushcart Prize and the Carlos Fuentes Award to inclusion in several volumes of The Best American Short Stories.
The dangers of intimacy and losing one's identity in a marriage are examined in the title story, a breathtakingly daring work about a wife who is literally devoured by her husband and children as they partake of a neverending sacrament - an ancient ritual to satiate an ancient hunger - in a gleaming Formica kitchen with all the modern conveniences.
Talk show host of the future John Q. Slade recounts the edge-of-your-seat excitement of the night Mickey Mouse went philosophical on him on live TV in "You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse." In "Schrodinger's Cat," the theoretical physicist runs into his cat, Young Werther, in the state of alternate reality posited by his theory and is greeted by the cat: "Welcome to nonexistence. It's quite a place."
Combining offbeat and wildly intelligent humor with an unerring sense of post-modern absurdity, Bev Jafek offers a bracing look at modern technology, modern relationships and the ever-present threat of the future breathing down our necks.

Surrealism and the absurd--infused with feminist concerns and science fiction themes--mark this debut short story collection by a Pushcart Prize winner. The title story features a man who indeed takes a bite out of his wife, with his children later following his example. "Carmen's Answer" opens with a lesbian falling off a ladder as she tries to listen to Bizet's opera and paint exterior window trim simultaneously; injected with Demerol at the hospital, she flashes back to a lifetime of her love objects, including an eight-year-old Brownie scout as well as "a pure superlative: the demonstrator with the largest sign . . . the bearer of the most ungodly clothing when clothed." The equally original "Schrodinger's Cat" explores the moral ramifications of quantum physics (and metaphysics) as the eponymous feline turns out to be a species-hopping, gender-bending theoretical scientist who has "outpublished the whole worldwide community of physicists." "Apocalypse," set in 986, and the futuristic "Holograms, unlimited" are particularly unnerving as their characters encounter threats upon life as they know it. Violence and abuse, including rape, bulimia, cannibalism, etc., recur throughout the nine stories here, but it is not always clear whether the author is using shocking material for some literary purpose or for its own sake, in which case it seems merely gratuitous.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The eight stories in Jafek's first collection range from the fun and inventive "You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse," to the vivid but difficult-to-follow title story, to the frustratingly experimental "Holograms, Unlimited." When the famed mouse appears on a talk show--he's a sort-of-sentient hologram--he delights the audience by changing shape into the original "cartoon with big, heavy lines all around the edges." When the host asks after Minnie, Mickey's eyes "go like fried eggs. " In the title story, a man feels such passion for his wife that he takes a bite of her, eventually consuming so much of her that in old age he must replace her with a "tiny, brittle, aged" doll. In many of the stories, Jafek sacrifices plot and character on the altar of postmodernism, and the pyrotechnics eventually become tiresome. For large collections.
- Ron Antonucci, Hudson Lib. & Historical Soc., Ohio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.