ICE AGE

Brilliantly imaginative debut collection of ten stories, by this year’s winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award. Anderson imagines a multitude of worlds and an unforgettable assortment of people, some famous, some not: Norman Mailer, spoiling for a fight with his then-wife Adele; Leonard Bernstein, en route to Vienna but not before he hears from St. Catherine of Siena; a magazine photographer following Marilyn Monroe to a seedy movie theater; a madwoman beset by shimmering visions while imprisoned beneath the hard streets of New York; and more. Perhaps the best of these is an addled memoir of sorts by an ancient silent-film star, recalling her glory days with a grandiose, eccentric director, who ponders the memorable question: “Is there an animal that melts?` Anderson has an uncanny knack for entering the minds of his characters at will and at random, capturing with equal deftness the petty egotism and insecurity of great fame and the outsized dreams of more ordinary folk. He conjures the voices of a prostitute, a saint, a Mafia widow, and a host of others with consummate skill and an intuitive understanding of the quirks and terrors that comprise the human psyche.

Outrageous, sly, and bizarrely funny. Anderson is a writer to watch.