PRAISE FOR

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

“Bender’s taut prose works its wise melodies throughout this first collection … Each short story packs a heavy punch, and each should be savored. From cleverly comic to starkly surreal, Bender’s audacious characters surprise and delight. Sometimes, they even make you weep.”

—Boston Globe

“Bender’s world is strange and fabulous, an ultravivid, matter-of-fact presentation of extraordinary circumstances and bizarre fulfillments … Declarative and telegraphic, Bender’s stories read like modern fables—with a healthy sense of twisted humor thrown in for good measure.”

—Village Voice Literary Supplement

“A wild imagination, full of bikini-bold sexiness and brute deformity, shaped into art by the sure hand of a fabulist.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer, Best Fiction of 1998

“You don’t know weird until you’ve read this original, at times borderline-absurd short story collection.”

—Mademoiselle

“These stories plumb and expose deep tensions hidden in the mundane.”

—Washington Post