Reptile House - by Robin McLean (Paperback)

About the Book

With characters trapped by blind ambitions and toxic relationships, these stories probe the dark underbelly of human nature and want.

Book Synopsis

With characters trapped by blind ambitions and toxic relationships, these stories probe the dark underbelly of human nature and want.

Review Quotes

A Paris Review "Best Book of 2015"
Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize

"Like [Flannery] O'Connor's work, Reptile House is rife with moral ambiguity and extreme violence--elegantly written, abruptly erupting, and starkly moving--as well as other forms of human and inhuman darkness. . . . But there is unadulterated joy in Reptile House, and it lies in the inventiveness of McLean's language. Her prose is energetic and lyrical without excising ugliness . . . This skill with language makes possible the stories' portraits of human beings, so revealing in their unsentimental bleakness, and it is in this unique style that the worldhood of Reptile House emerges. . . . To read Reptile House is to dwell in a broken, funny, frightening, possibly doomed world--a world that may help us to read and live in our own."

--Kenyon Review

"Characters struggle to control slivers of their fates in the nine stories of McLean's debut. . . . McLean has a knack for stunning sentences that resonate with her characters' circumstances. . . . [She] stages yearning and stasis with poignancy and wit."

--Kirkus Reviews

"McLean's debut collection of short stories moves seamlessly from adultery to kidnapping, from assassination plots to extreme geothermal events, all in a voice that is spare and darkly poetic. . . . McLean's characters are lonely in their marriages, isolated from the world around them, and not generally given happy endings. What this book does offer, however, is strangely realistic glimpses into conflicts that are equal parts surreal and hyper-realistic, rendered by a voice that gracefully juxtaposes terse reportage and lyrical insight. The result is a taut volume that explores the fate of the dashed dreamer, offering charming insights into the untidy worlds of people who are not where they thought they'd be."

--Publishers Weekly

"I am still thinking about these stories, still turning those objects over in my head like the strange but stunning artifacts of someone else's life. And that, I suppose, is Reptile House's most impressive accomplishment: for better or worse, it is the kind of book that stays with you long after you've finished it, begging to be revisited over and over again."

--Colorado Review

"Upset runs rampant throughout McLean's debut work. McLean's surreal tales about ordinary characters deliver emotional truth in poetic language. Concrete and surreal, they spill beyond the conventional short story forms."

--Common

"Robin McLean writes in wonderful cascades of language. Her characters are carried along by those cascades, often unwittingly. Sometimes, as with the two young men in 'No Name Creek, ' they are carried to a happy end. More often, they seem to be, like Lilibeth in 'Cold Snap, ' overtaken by events beyond their control. Characters' own words, often inept or pathetic in light of their situations, offer ironic counterpoint. Much is laughable in these stories. Don't be deceived. Through her sly wit and humor, Robin McLean is luring readers into deeper questions."

--Frank Soos

"Tonally and structurally, these marvelous stories have no discernable influences. In her debut collection, Robin McLean emerges as a writer with a singular voice and vision. I admire this book immoderately, and I hope that readers will find it."

--Chris Bachelder

"Robin McLean's fiction is harrowing and wry and compassionate, and always both fiercely rooted in the world and fearlessly willing to take chances. I love her keen sense of our inherent strangeness, and her heartening sense of just how important it is that we never stop trying to close the gap be

About the Author

Robin McLean: Robin McLean was a lawyer and then a potter for 15 years in the woods of Alaska before receiving her MFA at UMass Amherst in Massachusetts. Her first collection Reptile House was a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Story Prize in 2011 and 2012. McLean's stories appear widely in such places as The Nashville Review, The Malahat Review, Gargoyle, and The Common and Copper Nickel, as well as the anthology American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers. A figure skater first--having learned to skate and walk at the same time--McLean believes that crashing on ice prepared her for writing fiction. She currently teaches at Clark University, and splits her time between Newfound Lake in Bristol, New Hampshire, and a 200-year-old farm in western Massachusetts.