Joe's Liver

You can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a short, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast-moving, heart-warming, brain-bending stories exist across the entire spectrum of the fantastic from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you'll no longer see everyday life quite the same. An orphaned boy in the Caribbean, named Readers Digest (after the magazine), but referred to mainly as "Ardy," is deeply inspired by his readings of the stories that appear in his namesake magazine and conceives a notion of making a pilgrimage to the Digest HQ in Pleasantville, New York and embarks on an odyssey to what he envisions as the most important symbolic beacon of the wonderfulness that is America. A simple trip turns complicated and Ardy meets an endless stream of very odd and unusual characters as his journey progresses to an unexpected finish. Originally published: 2000, in a limited edition of 300 copies. First reprint.