“Michel ably handles modes from lyrical to ironic, but he is most comfortable in a purposefully flat stye that reads something like translated Kafka.”
—The New York Times Sunday Book Review
“Deadpan and life affirming, the stories in this genre-bending debut veer from an apartment complex for the suicidal to a ghostly artists’ colony to the innards of wild things.”
—O Magazine
“The stories are full of monstrous surprises and eerie silences. But who is the real beast? Michel quietly, but unequivocally, leads readers to the answer as he navigates weird tragicomedy of daily life. With zombies.”
—Vanity Fair
“The twenty-five stories in this vibrant, bold and often funny book are full of such confusions of time and place. . . .There are stories within stories within stories, and grizzly bears swallowed by sharks that are then swallowed by sperm whales. Upright beasts don’t stay upright for long.”
—Guernica
“Dark, surreal, and imaginative, Lincoln Michel’s short story collection Upright Beasts is full of surprises at every turn.”
—BuzzFeed
“Michel captures the strangeness of the suburban South, and the rural wilderness surrounding it, through its chorus of blunt voices. His stories are absurd enough to reel you in, and emotionally honest enough to keep you reading.”
—HuffPost
“Michel, one of the country’s most respected literary journalists, is also well known for his short stories that defy easy classification. This volume collects 21 of his offbeat tales, dealing with zombies, the apocalypse, and other bizarre, darkly surreal themes.”
—Men’s Journal
“To write a killer short story . . . is a total miracle. But if you’re some kind deranged monster like Lincoln Michel, you can churn these puppies out in your sleep.”
—Tor.com
“[Upright Beasts is] a dark, dreamy spiral into a world mostly like ours, but a few degrees off, and this distance is more than compelling.”
—The Rumpus
“Lincoln Michel has brought off a worthy debut in Upright Beasts, a rowdy klatch of stories with a number of winners.”
—Brooklyn Rail
“Upright Beasts, the debut collection from Lincoln Michel, offers numerous windows into the surreal and menacing. . . . It’s impressive, hypnotic work.”
—Vol. 1 Brooklyn
“Sly, obscure, and beyond terrific.”
—Fiction Advocate
“Weird, whimsical, horrific, romantic—very short stories can make room for some of the strangest, most wonderful things.”
—Catapult
