First published 1997
Colonel Mustard pursues Miss Scarlet through the strategic moves of a Clue game that reveals the hidden desires behind each player's tactics. A bored dilettante crafts his perfect imaginary woman only to watch her fall for an imaginary rival he never created. Citizens vanish one by one into the Barnum Museum, a monstrous attraction that grows more irresistible with each disappearance. A master magician performs sleight of hand so convincing that police hunt him for making the impossible real. Each story pulls readers deeper into worlds where games become seductions, fantasies betray their creators, museums devour towns, and magic crimes blur what exists and what merely appears to exist. Millhauser constructs a literary carnival where the ordinary rules of reality bend until they snap.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, fantasy, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: surreal, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Barnum Museum
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
240 pages · ebook · Dalkey Archive Press