A Bug Collection is not for the squeamish. These stories about love, death, and the webby, tenuous intersections between the two take a humorous and heartbreaking look at the complexities of human life through the compound eyes of bugs. When a lone mayfly has a painful revelation about the ephemerality of her own existence, it sets in motion a chain of revelations by more bugs: a honey bee who struggles against a paralyzing depression; a katydid who comes to terms with a life-altering disability; a water strider who offers proof of reincarnation; a tribe of ants who must confront their individual and collective powerlessness in the face of a catastrophic event; a tumbling flower beetle who falls for an abusive mate; an earthworm who gains a Buddhist-like understanding of his place in the universe; and a host of other bugs who force us to consider what it means to be fully alive in a world of dung.
A Bug Collection is not for the squeamish. These stories about love, death, and the webby, tenuous intersections between the two take a humorous and heartbreaking look at the complexities of human life through the compound eyes of bugs. When a lone mayfly has a painful revelation about the ephemerality of her own existence, it sets in motion a chain of revelations by more bugs: a honey bee who struggles against a paralyzing depression; a katydid who comes to terms with a life-altering disability; a water strider who offers proof of reincarnation; a tribe of ants who must confront their individual and collective powerlessness in the face of a catastrophic event; a tumbling flower beetle who falls for an abusive mate; an earthworm who gains a Buddhist-like understanding of his place in the universe; and a host of other bugs who force us to consider what it means to be fully alive in a world of dung.
Melody Mansfield's first novel, The Life Stone of Singing Bird, was published by Faber and Faber, Inc. to favorable reviews from The New York Times Book Review, Booklist, and others. Her short fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary, academic, and commercial publications including Thought Magazine, Inside English, and Parent's Magazine. She is currently at work on a number of longer projects, including a semi-autobiographical account of her years as a ballet dancer in NYC. She lives in Los Angeles with her writer/professor husband, Jerry Mansfield, and is the Director of Creative Writing at Milken Community High School.
"Love and mortality, aspiration and disappointment, evil and the
sometimes-futile attempts to overcome it: In her dazzling new book
A Bug Collection, Melody Mansfield takes universal concerns like
these and boils them down into concentrated, microcosmic
packages--several stories, two poems, and one play. Though written
from bugs' points of view, all of the works offer insightful
glimpses into the lights and darks of living in this world."
--Beth Castrodale, Small Press Picks "In the bizarre enchantment of
this collection, all the glories and dilemmas of Western
civilization are second nature to the dung beetles, katydids, and
fireflies, while Melody Mansfield's reverence for all life makes
her intimately acquainted with every pedipalp and scutellum.
Immerse yourself in these strange pages: erudite, ecstatic, and
suffused with gentle humor." --Diane Lefer, author of California
Transit: Stories and Nobody Wakes Up Pretty "Mansfield employs the
unlikely and fresh metaphors of bugs--mayflies, fireflies, dung
beetles, and the rest--to provide a whimsical and sometimes
heart-wrenching reminder that the human condition is fraught with
battling hopes, fears, vanity, and finding love despite setbacks of
imperfection. The writer considers how grand and hopeful we can
remain in spite of the unavoidable truth of our mortality. Gregor
Samsa, you are not alone. A Bug Collection is an enlightening,
beautiful, and delightful read." --Jane Bradley, author of You
Believers, Are We Lucky Yet?, Living Doll, and Power Lines "Melody
Mansfield's A Bug Collection offers a richly imaginative,
stylistically diverse reading experience full of wit and
philosophical insight into love, death, the very nature of
human/bug existence. Contemporary stories, buggy retellings of
classical and biblical tales, inventive blends. Mansfield makes you
love and hate her bug stand-ins for flawed humankind, and offers a
rare treat: an incredibly fun story collection (with a play and
poems as added bonuses) so full of existential wisdom that when you
finish, you find yourself wondering how she pulled it off... and
longing for more." --Daniel M. Jaffe, editor of With Signs &
Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction;
author of The Limits of Pleasure and Jewish Gentle and Other
Stories of Gay-Jewish Living "According to Mansfield's delightfully
creative vision, it turns out bugs are like us--just more poetic
and better read. Cleverly toying with masters of literature and the
forms they used, Mansfield introduces us to a cast of bugs that
includes a Tennyson-loving katydid--abhorrer of Shelley, a
'depressssed' honey bee who observes another bee plunging into
gossip as if it were pollen, and a judgmental firefly who
surprisingly discovers love. Even with their compound eyes and
different limb counts, these insects reflect our humanity, with our
fear of mortality, longing for love, and painful misunderstandings.
Their powerful, insect-sized stories are told as Greek tragedies,
in poetry (sonnets, villanelle, Canterbury Tales), and in one
notable achievement, as a Dragnet episode. In their anguish, they
shake their tarsi at God, but like Mansfield's fluid prose, many of
them fly. Join them in their flight; this is a bug collection you
must experience." --Mary Clyde, author of Survival Rates, winner of
the Flannery O'Connor Fiction Award "Not quite fable, but the feel
of fable, the bugs in Melody Mansfield's A Bug Collection are real
(and smart!)--filled with yearning, pain, excitement, loss, joy.
These stories are authentically human without one single human
character. Mansfield's sentences are sharp and prophetic. In 'To
Kill a Katydid, ' the narrator instructs us on how t
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