{"product_id":"book-fu00","title":"Droll Tales","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWitty and surreal tales that transcend rationality and illuminate our world, from America's most original writer\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWelcome to the world of \u003cem\u003eDroll Tales\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: start\"\u003eA 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: start\"\u003eRomantic, dark, and ironic, \u003cem\u003eDroll Tales\u003c\/em\u003e is a book like none you have read. It is a joyful interrogation of the paradoxes underpinning life, a cabinet of curiosities, a philosophical vaudeville, a puzzle in fourteen pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles's singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blackstone Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49290137534768,"sku":"BDfu00","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio CD","offer_id":49290137600304,"sku":"ZEfu00","price":41.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Audio MP3-CD","offer_id":49290137633072,"sku":"ZMfu00","price":31.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/fu00-Square-cover.jpg?v=1775952329","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-fu00","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}