Praise for Daniel Grandbois’ Writing
These are works of surpassing literary merit… some of the most inventive, restless and creative fiction I have read in the last five years. [They] sustain contemporary American fiction, even rehabilitate it, and to have all these works in one place for readers of the future is to do a good thing for all who care about the condition of prose writing in North America. --Rick Moody
Unlucky Lucky Tales is an ongoing explosion of witty references and allusions, energetic retellings and rearrangements of stock narratives and images, and—above all—constantly varying tonal approaches to the material and constantly various strategies for release… Reading it, I think of the great jazz improvisers or Angela Hewitt’s version of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” Here is a plenitude, a world of effects and inventions, from a fine and mentally agile writer… This is a book of imagination's plenty. Ultimately, it is a book of wonder and delight. --Ed Ochester
Perhaps Daniel Grandbois is the love child of Rod Serling, HP Lovecraft, and Russell Edson. His prose poems hybridize shards of folk tale, sci fi, wacky animism, derailed creation myths, and surreal apocalypse. Each piece is a microcosm of hyped up postmodern imagination, in which narrative mutates, self cannibalizes, self resurrects. Wild contradictions and dizzying distortions of scale, morphology, and time rule Grandbois’ world. Now a stain, now a termite queen, now a goat-man, divulge their points of view. Kiss conventional reality goodbye and prepare to have your brain rearranged, to enter a realm in which scintillating, nonstop invention is god. --Amy Gerstler
One is tempted to look for precedents to his odd surrealism and verbal pranks, but it’s clear Grandbois has staked out his own territory, one peopled with offbeat characters and varied discourses. Amidst these shenanigans, hovers a crafty narrative presence seasoned by years of experience. The wise fool, an old conceit of literature, resurfaces, and he is of course Grandbois himself. --Peter Johnson
A celebration of language in its purest form, exactly what poetry itself was supposed to be. --Best Experimental Book Listing 2008, CCLaP (Chicago Center for Literature & Photography)
The short, interconnected pieces of Unlucky Lucky Days should be on the shelf of every high school English teacher, every writer who’s sat and stared at a blank page, and every reader who is looking for a quick laugh. Very, very strange—in a good way, of course. --ABA, Next Notable Book Listing
In a folklore-like fugue that resembles a darkly humorous Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino, Grandbois… use[s] everything from animals to sentient pieces of paper to illustrate metaphysically dizzying truths about the world. --The Onion
These are funny, bizarre, moving stories—a pleasure to read. --Lydia Davis
Singularly original and captivating… an important work of fiction that should transform what notions of fiction may currently exist. --Luis J. Rodriguez
A must read for anyone who cares about the future of American Literature. --Doug Martin
Animated by a wonderfully droll and fantastical imagination, these little stories are delicious. --Rikki Ducornet
Grandbois is a master of the double-edged word, of stories that both cut through the world like butter and double-back to saw themselves to bits. --Brian Evenson
A modern space-time set of interconnected myths and stories… elegantly precise, graceful, a work of art. --Ed Sanders
