Passing strange
Passing strange
Passing strange
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
San Francisco in 1940 is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to the cities within the city: the Magic City of the World's Fair on an island created of artifice and illusion; the forbidden city of Chinatown, a separate, alien world of exotic food and nightclubs that offer "authentic" experiences, straight from the pages of the pulps; and the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society can meet. Six women find their lives as tangled with each other's as they are with the city they call home. They discover love and danger on the borders where magic, science, and art intersect.
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3.5 out of 5 stars – see this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.
Passing Strange is a story of love and friendship among six women in 1940s San Francisco. Author Ellen Klages employs elegant prose, a straightforward plot, and a splash of magic to construct this beautiful and well-told story. Everything here works well, but nothing about it blew me away. That being said, I would read an entire book of Klages describing pastries!
A wonderful love story and a nice evocation of 1940s San Fransisco, a place of real magic with its steep streets, delicious restaurants, the chaos of Chinatown, and just off the coast: Treasure Island, home of the ‘39 World Fair. A troubled place also, where the immigrant and queer communities are under constant threat and the only small way they can express themselves is under the voyeuristic gaze of uncouth tourists.
I wish the fantastical element was left maybe a bit more ambiguous but otherwise this was a great novella.
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