The Miniature Wife and Other Stories (Riverhead Books, 2013) was Manuel Gonzales’s first collection of short stories. Critics were very excited about it, and it lived up to their expectations. The eighteen stories make the fantastic seem normal and the normal seem amazing, and the writing is full of energy and beauty. People often compare Gonzales’s work to that of George Saunders and Aimee Bender. He quickly became known as a unique voice in modern American fiction, one that was willing to break genre rules to reveal deeply human truths.
One of the best things about the collection is how wide it is. Gonzales, a first-time author, gives us 18 short stories that are full of creativity and don’t follow many rules. The first story, “Pilot, Copilot, Writer,” sets the tone right away. A journalist tries to figure out why his hijacked plane has been flying around the Dallas skyline for 20 years. The title story is about a scientist who accidentally shrinks his wife to a size close to that of a cell. After that, the couple fights more and more at home. At first, the plot seems funny, but it gets darker as things get out of hand. Other highlights are “One-Horned & Wild-Eyed,” which clearly shows how unhappy middle-aged people are, and “The Artist’s Voice,” in which the famous musician Karl Abbasonov’s mind is paralyzed when he writes music, and doctors find out he only speaks through his ears.
The emotional undertow that runs beneath each absurd surface is what makes Gonzales different from other genre novelties. In settings that are a little out of the ordinary, Gonzales shows how real guilt can be for both small and big mistakes in a marriage, the strong desire to change oneself, and the strong need to protect and care for the people we love. Many reviewers said this about the stories: they were sometimes scary and disturbing, sometimes funny and strange, but in all cases they were brilliantly written gems that looked right into the heart of what it means to be human. Gonzales’s use of deadpan first-person narration throughout the collection is especially effective. The strange things that happen to the characters are treated as normal, everyday things, and the narrators’ lack of emotion might make you think these stories are safe when they aren’t.
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The critics were very positive. Publishers Weekly gave the collection a starred review, saying that Gonzales does a great job of mixing the real and the fantastic, making it a fun and thought-provoking collection. Kirkus said it was a collection of creepy stories from the dark side that were fun to read. Other writers were just as enthusiastic. Wells Tower said the stories were full of strong clarity, Borgesian inventiveness, and enchanting, clever wit. Ben Marcus said Gonzales had a brand new American literary voice.
But not every critic was completely convinced. A review in Full Stop said that some of Gonzales’s ideas are based on well-known tropes like zombies, werewolves, and unicorns. The review also said that the collection suffers when the surreal nature of Gonzales’s ideas makes the stories less relevant to everyday life. There is a good point here: the collection is strongest when the fantastical serves the emotional instead of taking away from it, and a few stories do that. Even the more skeptical reviewers agreed that Gonzales is at his best when he trusts the ordinary. For example, in “The Artist’s Voice,” his refusal to dramatize difference turns a strange idea into a subtly moving story by showing how magic comes from, not against, the normal things that happen in life.
Responses from readers echoed this mix of confusion and love. A lot of people said that the collection stayed with them long after they finished it. The stories will stay with you long after you finish them. If Gonzales makes you feel a little uneasy, he has done his job well. Another reader said that the collection is like falling asleep and having a really strange dream, and then waking up and wondering, “Where did that come from?”
The Miniature Wife is a great first book. It’s creative, disturbing, and quietly moving. At its best, the collection shows what literature can do: it can turn this strange, cold, messy world into something human by making people feel like they are there. The Miniature Wife is an unforgettable first book that is brilliantly thought out, very original, and told with the narrative instinct of a born storyteller. It rewards patient, curious readers who are willing to follow Gonzales wherever his strange imagination leads.
