Sorry Please Thank You

"What Charles Yu does very well--it is a long list, but this may be its most notable entry--is to create strange and disturbingly normal alternate realities. In his first novel, "How To Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe," Yu conceived of Minor Universe 31, a universe filled with people widely, albeit unhappily, using time machines. He took sci-fi theories and ran them through a sort of literary normalizer, applying ample wit, pop-culture references, psychological insight, metaphorical flair, and a vital sweetness (his young, isolated protagonist, in search of his father, even has a stray dog for a pet). Overflowing with quasi-scientific jargon, the novel was exciting and funny and, at times, downright spooky, much like the quantum theories that Yu invoked. But most of all, for a story about a time travel mechanic, it was unfailingly realistic. . . . In his new collection of stories, "Sorry Please Thank You," Yu no longer constrains himself to the pre-requisites of realism--or, to be more accurate, the "appearance" of realism. Freed from this yoke, he takes off in every narrative direction with the glee of a school-kid released for summer vacation. . . . While Yu has drawn many comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut for his entertaining and adept satire, and to Douglas Adams for his intelligent and inventive silliness, Donald Barthelme seems an overlooked literary forebear. . . . As readers, we are all the better for Yu's astonishing mix of wild imagination and meticulous restraint. Of the three polite phrases that comprise his title--"Sorry Please Thank You"--only the last is of true relevance here. No sorries, Charles. Just thanks." --"Los Angeles Review of Books" "There's some of the cerebral gamesmanship of Jonathan Lethem, the resigned sadness of Kurt Vonnegut, the Phil Dickian paranoiac distrust of consumer culture. But Yu's voice, sensibility and approach are unique, especially in the ways he wrings humor and pathos out of stripped-down syntax and seemi