Madame Cruller's Couch & Other Dark and Bizarre Tales by Elizabeth Massie

     I’ve been a fan of Massie’s since her Leisure publishing days. So it’s been a minute and yet she never disappoints. And so I was excited to find her latest collection on Netgalley, grabbed and read it right away and sure enough, still good
    This collection comprises a bunch of short stories, a couple of poems (which honestly I can do without, but that might be a personal preference and they are at any rate too short to mind) and one novella, which takes up the final third of the book. It starts off with a bang, with a titular tale about, among other things, the dangers of grabbing secondhand furniture. A great story that really showcases Massie’s storytelling talents. Then there are a couple of just ok stories and then it really revs up into the high gear and stays there. Am I biased in adoring the tale of a clever Angus steer named Poopy Tail who gets back at his horrible owners? Possibly, but come on, how can you not love that. Massie’s really good at animating the animals, actually, and unlike the bipeds, they are uniformly likeable.
     So yeah, the short stories are pretty much all good to excellent, with a lovely range and even lovelier dark flights of imagination.
     The novella is a somewhat different beast, for one thing it’s s social satire. Specifically, it satirizes a society that declines into an idiocracy after a large percentage of the population develops a passionate disdain for science of any kind and, with it, intelligence, education, diversity, etc. You can tell these individuals by their red…Well, read and find out. What oh what might have inspired such a story. A story presciently enough finished at the end of 2019. Technically a global scenario, but really a distinctly American dystopia. Brutal, viscerally disturbing, kind of over the top as far as satires go, but then again this isn’t a genre known for its subtlety.
    Genre wise these are definitely tales of horrific persuasion, but not precisely so, more like dark speculative fiction if you had to put a label on it. Original, exciting and fun…morals included. Another very good read from a reliably very good author. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.