The Museum of Lost Things: Stories

Praise for THE MUSEUM OF LOST THINGS: stories

The Museum of Lost Things is a fascinating collection of sketches and tales, many of which feature ingenious setups or premises. The book revels in the notion of taking something just a little bit further than you’d expect. The stories are often absurd but realistically so. They’re smart and witty and self-aware in ways that are intellectually stimulating without being annoying (as many self-aware texts can be).... The book made me think of Charlie Kaufman’s work on film: Being John Malkovich; Adaptation; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind... The characters would be right at home in his worlds.

Thomas Cotsonas, author of Nominal Cases, Black Lawrence Press

Dennis Pahl is an extraordinary writer, a master of short fiction with a fresh, original voice. His brilliant debut collection of linked stories, The Museum of Lost Things, references and evokes Cortazar, Borges, and Kafka. It is as though Woody Allen, trapped in Poe’s darker stories, tortured by guilt and uncertainty, nonetheless maintained his sense of humor. In The Museum of Lost Things protagonists suffer uncanny transformations of the familiar to the strange. They are obsessed with stories they are writing or telling, stories others are telling, and with, ultimately, discovering the stories they are living. The Museum of Lost Things is both profound and entertaining. It earns a spot on even the most crowded bookshelf—it’s a book to keep within reach.

Miriam N. Kotzin, author of Right This Way, Spuyten Duyvil Press

There are thirty odd stories in this collection. “Odd” is intended as a pun here, and in the very best sense of the word. To cite just a few examples, a younger version of a man’s self turns up in his suitcase and ends up stealing away his wife - shades of Dostoyevsky’s short story, “The Double.” A man cracks his head on the pavement, and all his thoughts spill out in the form of red rubber balls which bounce away down the street. In the title story, a man descends a staircase and is confronted with a gallery of all the things he has lost in his life: umbrellas, hair, nerve, friends, love… Outrageous and absurd, the stories are the stuff of dreams, or perhaps nightmares, with an internal dream-like coherence and logic. Kafkaesque, Irreal, in the sense of a well-known literary journal. Witty, charming, and disturbing in places, this collection is a pure delight.

Denis Bell, author of A Box of Dreams, Luchador Press