The Color Master: Stories

This woman knows how to write. Her stories are enticingly bizarre and beautiful. This was my second reading, and it was very interesting to me how some of the stories had really stuck with me while the ones I most enjoyed this time around were not the same as last time. I'll probably read it again in another 5-10 years just to see what sparks me then!

I am not a short story fan. I really dislike becoming emotionally involved with characters and then letting them go (usually in obscurity) after 40 pages. Uh-uh. Give me a novel any day. That said, Aimee Bender does not write short stories, but dreams and I love them. She makes me question things I never thought to question before, and plants ideas in my head. How important, really, are faces? What will be the impact of a culture that is losing its words? I didn't know I cared about these things, but through dreams I realize I really do.
Each of these stories takes you someplace very strange and then smacks you around while you are there. Because of that, I try to read them with long pauses in between each tale in order to let them sink in and to question what I just gleamed from them.
I could not help but assign each of these stories a color as I read them. I may have guessed them correctly, or I may be way off base. Who knows? The Devourings, freshest in my mind, was very green. The Doctor and the Rabbi? Blood red.
I don't think I could pick a favorite here. I enjoyed all of them in one way or another. Lemonade meant something important to me because I have two teen girls. That may not have been the point of the story, it doesn't matter, I know what it meant to me.
Americca amazed me. I think I could read it over and over again and still not want to leave (it was orangy yellow, btw, for curry).
I highly recommend this set of tales for someone who is in the mood for something amazing, and there is enough here for those who love retellings of fairy tales (although these are original tales).