Hybrid Creatures - (Yellow Shoe Fiction) by Matthew Baker (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Hybrid Creatures, Matthew Baker's sharp and innovative collection, follows four very different protagonists as they search for, and struggle with, connection: an amateur hacker attempts to track down his vanished mentor; a math prodigy, the child of divorced parents, struggles with being torn between his two families; a composer takes a spontaneous trip to Nashville while mourning his husband's death and gets trapped on a hotel rooftop with a hipster; and a wayward philosopher accepts a job working for an industrial farming corporation. Through-out, Baker explores the inner dialogue of failed, floundering, and successful bonds between strangers, among family and friends, and even within a person.

Pairing the emotional pursuit of connection with multiple forms of communication, Baker weaves the languages of HTML, mathematics, mu-sical notations, and propositional logic into the storytelling in order to unveil nuances of experiences and emotions. This poignant formal invention articulates loneliness, grief, doubt, and comfort in ways that are inaccessible through traditional language alone.

In both form and content, Baker captures the complexities of breaking and forming connections with other people, and the various lan-guages we use to navigate this inescapable human need--resulting in a moving exploration of interpersonal bonds.

Review Quotes

In Hybrid Creatures, a character asserts that 'there were no superior or inferior forms, ' but these are fantastic, fearless stories that I could not imagine until Baker, with such care and control, led me toward something altogether a superior form. An amazing discovery.--Kevin Wilson

No one writes quite like Matthew Baker, and Hybrid Creatures is an astonishingly unique collection. Through the language of coding, mathematics, and musical notation, the characters in these stories analyze their worlds through ordered systems of logic that attempt to make sense of the inexplicability of grief and loss. This is a beautiful book from an observant and talented writer. I couldn't put it down.--Anne Valente

Oh damn, Matthew Baker has outdone himself. Hybrid Creatures is a deep dive into some of the most fascinating character-minds in fiction. A hacker, a mathematically gifted child, a composer, and a philosopher each process the world through their field's systems of notation. And yet feeling rules every page. Emotionally intimate, bursting with longing and humor, these stories disarm, delight, and surprise. Baker is a literary innovator^genius.--Kelly Luce

About the Author

Matthew Baker is the author of the children's novel If You Find This, a Booklist Top Ten Debut of 2015 and an Edgar Award Nominee for Best Juvenile Mystery. Baker's stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, New England Review, The Southern Review, Electric Literature, One Story, and elsewhere.