Out There

Reviews / Votes

Out There is for readers who consider body horror to be a love language. True romantics will swoon either despite or because of the gore that accompanies these sharp, affable stories . . . Folk's stories have been compared to Shirley Jackson's, and this is most apparent in the way Folk balances her horror with humour. * New York Times Book Review * Kate Folk's short stories are wonderfully weird; playfully pushing the possibilities of plotlines towards the uncanny, creepy and off-kilter, they have a seam of dark humour that illuminates the grotesquery with an unnerving beauty * Daily Mail * One could fancy Kate Folk as the literary love child of Kafka and Camus and Bradbury, if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of Black Mirror, but that still wouldn't capture the blazing originality and exhilarating weirdness of her writing. Wondrously perverse, often creepy and hilarious, and always sneakily heart-breaking, from the moment you read these tales you'll know you're in the presence of a singularly brilliant vision, one that burns off the scrim of our normal-seeming human customs and operations to reveal the utter bizarreness of this existence. Out There, it turns out, lies very much within. Disturbing, alluring, dazzling and creepy, Out There is a riveting collection that keeps you enthralled with every page. A wonderful absurdist collection that explores the vagaries of human connections * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * This collection of internet gothic fiction delighted, unsettled, and moved me in the best possible way. Kate Folk is an exceptionally talented new voice, one able to render both the otherworldly as well as the absurd banalities of contemporary life with a cutting, mirthful grace. Here is a writer we will be lucky to read for years to come. Fifteen extraordinary, through-the-looking-glass tales, containing locked rooms, demanding houses, embodied Russian bots, revolution, and relationships -- all delivered with a side of menace. Wonderfully weird and weirdly wonderful, Folk is a dazzling talent -- Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of <i>We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves</i> Tightly constructed and spectacularly mind-bending stories that ingeniously pair everyday challenges and outlandish predicaments, ranging from hilarious to terrifying. Folk writes with unnerving matter-of-factness as she veers into Poe- and Shirley Jackson-like horror or turns to the poignantly fantastic in the mode of George Saunders or Kelly Link. * Booklist (starred review) * Kate Folk's stories inhabit otherworldly realms where exquisite language and beguiling characters excavate the very nature of love and existence. Kate Folk is a formidable writer, a literary swordsmith of feline dexterity, very dark and very funny, equally at home in the magisterial dark and the relentless glare of truth. The stories in this stunning debut are funny, fearless, and moving portraits of life shaped by the ever-widening shadow of technological progress. Folk's imagination is uncanny and arresting. Out There expertly captures the all-too-human experience of longing for lives we may never inhabit, and the final story is a chilling and tender portrait of love that will stick with you long after you finish the book. -- Alex McElroy, author of <i>The Atmospherians</i> Utterly original and deliciously twisted, Folk is a refreshing new voice in short stories The lucid, unsettling landscapes in Out There bring our own world into chilly focus through an exquisitely distorted lens. Each one of these amazing stories is a masterclass in eeriness and perception. Kate Folk's imagination is on fire. -- Ayseguel Savas, author of <i>White on White</i> Spellbinding and exquisitely strange, Out There glows like the neighbor's TV at night, illuminating the shape of our human longings in all their hopeful incompetence and comic despair. With unassuming precision and casual beauty, these superbly crafted stories make uncanny meaning of our vacant moment. Out There is a friend in the dark and Kate Folk is a marvel. An assortment of stories so sharp and ingenious you may cut yourself on them while reading, like a drawer full of the most beautiful knives. Kate Folk's Out There goes onto my shelf of favorite collections. Wry, riveting, and ambitious, Out There is one of those rare collections that manages to be both brilliantly inventive and emotionally resonant. Folk's tilted worlds are hilarious and unsettling-they sit squarely in the spaces where anxiety and exhilaration collide. Full of unforgettable voices and gleeful, exacting prose, this is a sharp and stylish debut from a wildly gifted writer Kate Folk will be compared to Carmen Maria Machado and Julia Armfield - there are wonderful similarities in the sheer force of her creations, but she's very much her own writer. These stories are funny, scalding and, sometimes, breathtakingly beautiful. -- Sarah Davis-Goff, author of <i>Last Ones Left Alive</i>