A review by lovelyoutliers
Man V. Nature by Diane Cook

5.0

It's been a long time since I read a collection of short stories, and Cook has really dazzled me with her collection. Each of these stories is set in a world eerily recognizable - basically our reality but with something a little off-kilter, resulting in creepy but gripping tales. Each story absorbed me from the beginning (the man standing in a new mother's front yard as she brings home her baby, the woman obsessively consumed by fantasies about her local meteorologist, 10 year old boys determined as "unnecessary"). I think the thing that is so captivating about these stories is their quotidian details conceal a much darker, dystopian underside which scratches at the very nature of human behaviour. Really rather extraordinary.