Why read The Great Frustration?

Book cover of The Great Frustration: Stories

Book description

Equal parts fable and wry satire, The Great Frustration is a sparkling debut. Seth Fried balances the dark--a town besieged, a yearly massacre, the harem of a pathological king--with moments of sweet optimism--researchers unexpectedly inspired by discovery, the triumph of a doomed monkey, the big implications found in a series…

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Short story collections

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Great Frustration as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Rita Chang-Eppig

Author

Is Fried’s short story collection The Great Frustration literary, science fiction, fantasy, absurdist, or something else? I have no idea, and I suspect neither does he, but that’s one of the reasons I love this book so much.

Whether Fried is writing about the animals in the Garden of Eden or a town that refuses to change its ways despite its pesky recurrent problem of massacres, these stories will make you laugh.

After you’re done laughing, when you’ve had some time to think, you’ll realize that you were only laughing because Fried is adept at pointing out those aspects of…

From Rita's list on if you find genre boundaries kind of silly.