I had to read this for a course in Spring of 2024. Folk's details and way of describing different parts of the stories are fascinating and draw the reader into the feelings of uncanny valley that are provided within the pages. ( )

So, this one was a surprise. I really didn't expect to like this story collection as much as I did. I'm actually glad I didn't know much about it when I started reading it cause I was genuinely surprised how bizarre, but well-written these stories are.

This collection is great to read in between books or whenever you need a break from a longer read. It would be a waste to read it in one go, cause these individual stories need to be appreciated for what they are. My favourite stories were Out There with the online dating scene being overrun by blots - fake men whose purpose is to harvest data from women and A Scale Model of Gull Point - about an artist stuck in a resort amid civil unrest.

Some of these were so uncomfortable to read, like The Bone Ward, about a woman in a treatment centre for bone-melting disease or Shelter, where a woman is obsessed with a storm shelter in the basement leading to a shocking end.

Many of these have a really great message under all this symbolism. Only a few were just a little boring and felt like more style than substance. ( )

Out There is a collection of short stories in which Kate Folk takes an artifact of our culture or language and pushed it out there, really out there. For example, we have all heard men say they are a leg man or a breast man or whatever. So she writes about spleen men, renal women, and so on. It’s hilariously out there.

Her very short The Last Woman on Earth begs to be read aloud, though it might be difficult to talk amongst the guffaws. I showed it to my best friend and she had to read it aloud to her partner because it is one of those stories you cannot let be. It has to be shared because it would be selfish to keep it to yourself. Again, she takes something people say all the time and takes it out there to the very edge and then jumps over.

Out There is so good, I am half tempted not to read another book this month in order to end the year on a high. I don’t think it can be matched. It is one of my favorite books of the year and one of the very few I began telling people about before I finished because it was too good not to get the word out.

There is not a single story that falls flat. They all have this element of cultural recognition where we can see that kernel of reality that sets Folk speculating about what if? The title story takes the reality of Russian bots to create the threat of being taken in by Russian blots – humanoid artificially-intelligent biological beings generated to defraud people. There are two stories about the blots, one to make you laugh and one to tear your heart out.

Folk understands something few writers do, that people habituate to the absurd with ease. She takes the quotidian to the absurd, but she talks about the absurdity with the same matter-of-factness as the everyday. It’s hilarious, horrifying, laughable, relatable, and all at the same time. Now I was a hard copy so I can bend corners and underline sentences, and sink into her many delicious stories.

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2023/12/29/out-there-by-kate-folk/ ( )

This is everything I wanted Her Body and Other Parties to be. ( )

wow. wow. wow! 15 short stories that are so weird in the best way possible. i don't normally read sci-fi books but this had me hooked from the first story. this was just so great and very creative and unusual and creepy and thought-provoking. i don't know much about Kate Folk, but i'd definitely read more by them after this

top 3 stories: doe eyes, moist house and the turkey rumble! SO SO SO GOOD! ( )