Droll Tales

By: Iris Smyles

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Tavia Gilbert, Jonathan Davis, Emily Lawrence

Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

Witty and surreal tales that transcend rationality and illuminate our world, from America’s most original writer.

Welcome to the world of Droll Tales, in which reality is a mutually agreed-upon illusion and life is painful, paradoxical, beautiful, and brief. With an oddball cast of characters who reappear in various guises throughout these interrelated stories, Smyles reveals an off-kilter world overlapping this one. And in giving us a tour of this enchanted, sometimes absurd place, with its own workings and ways of expression, she gives us a new way to understand our own.

A young suburban woman runs away to Europe to become a living statue; Mallarmé is at long last translated into pig Latin; a house full of surrealists compete for love on a reality TV show; a list of fortune-cookie messages reveals the inner world of the young man employed to write them; and a story of love and betrayal is told through the sentence diagrams on a fifth grader’s grammar test.

Romantic, dark, and ironic, Droll Tales is a book like none you have experienced. It is a joyful interrogation of the paradoxes underpinning life, a cabinet of curiosities, a philosophical vaudeville, a puzzle in 14 pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles’ singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.

©2022 Iris Smyles (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Words that tickle

If you’ve seen me laughing alone with my headphones on, chances are I was listening to Iris Smyles’ collection of short stories. They are all fairly different from one another, but share a surrealistic style. The first one, about a woman working as a living statue on the streets of Europe, is gently amusing, probably the most straightforward of the bunch. It got my attention. Other stories are stranger and follow a perverse dream logic. Having been caught completely off guard by one of them, I welcomed the challenge:

“I see. So we’re playing by these rules now… Very well, then, Ms. Smyles. Bring it on. Let's see who laughs last.”

At times, I'd confusedly ask myself what on Earth I was listening to, yet the absurdity and oddity of it all would result in an involuntary, nervous chuckle. Advantage Ms. Smyles.

For those of you who enjoy film, I was reminded at times of Charlie Kaufman, Monty Python, Tim Burton's 'Ed Wood', Mel Brooks and 'Celine and Julie Go Boating', to name a few. These comparisons probably don't really do the audiobook justice, but they can give you a very vague sense of what you'll encounter. The writing is irreverent and unruly.

Not all the tales tickle the same way or are as droll as advertised. A few, the most bizarre, seemed nearly impenetrable and had me wondering whether I was experiencing cognitive problems. I suspect that was the intention of the author, such is her twisted sense of humor. I have decided to give those stories a second listen after spending some years away as a hermit. This seems only appropriate, as most of the characters who inhabit this book are comically lonely. Some address important philosophical questions, such as whether it’s time for an ALF reboot.

The narrators each bring out their different own flavors. They're all good readers, although inevitably, I prefer some than others. My favorite is one of the ladies, a true master of deadpan delivery, who made me laugh the most. I wish I knew her name. I bet they all had a blast with this job.