Magic Can't Save Us: Eighteen Tales of Likely Failure

Many relationships are doomed from the start. But what if there was a way to save them? The characters in Magic Can't Save Us think they may have the answers--why visit a human counselor when you could spend the night in a house haunted by a poltergeist that specializes in couples therapy? Others are ready to call it quits, like the pair that's torn apart, literally, by a bevy of belligerent harpies. Meanwhile, a scorned woman hires a dragon to guard her house from her cheating mate, a couple tries to combat the inertia of their marriage through the revitalizing charms of unicorn meat, and a centaur seduces a luckless man's girlfriend over a series of conference calls. In these eighteen tales of likely failure, when a magical creature shows up, you know things are only going to get worse from there. Subverting the all-too-real emotions of romantic relationships with humor and iconoclastic takes on classic fantastical beings, Magic Can't Save Us makes us rethink the choices we have made in order to ask a harrowingly human question: Just what does it take to redeem a relationship?

About the Author :
Josh Denslow is the author of Not Everyone Is Special (7.13 Books), Super Normal (Stillhouse Press), and the upcoming collection Magic Can't Save Us (UNO Press). His most recent short stories have appeared in Electric Literature's The Commuter, The Rumpus, and Okay Donkey, among others. He is the Email Marketing Manager for Bookshop.org, and he has read and edited for SmokeLong Quarterly for over a decade. He currently lives in Barcelona with his family.

Review :
"If Ukelele Ike and Hans Christian Andersen had babies, one of them could probably write imaginative, funny, playful stories, where otherworldly creatures often infiltrate the commonplace to create their own brand of magic, such as these." - Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë and Tears of the Trufflepig "With the fabulist hand of Aimee Bender and Karen Russell and the humor and irreverence of Steve Almond, Denslow masterfully juggles crumbling relationships and beings of myth in a whirlwind of awkward silences, deceit, and failure to love. Whether these broken characters seek out magic or if magic seeks them, Denslow has proven himself to be a master of holding the unreal to our imperfect hearts, proving that no magic is ever enough to deliver happiness. A tragic, humorous, and wonderfully magical collection from a writer that you should be watching. "- Sequoia Nagamatsu, Bestselling Author of How High We Go in the Dark "You need to read this wry collection that crackles with funny dialogue and page-turning action. Josh Denslow's writing will disturb and dazzle you. Be prepared to laugh and have your imagination expanded." - Ursula Villarreal-Moura, author of Like Happiness "We all have writers we love, those whose work speaks to us, makes us happy, and serves as a gut punch. Sometimes these writers create something new, and we think, wow, I've always enjoyed their insight into relationships, and their use of wordplay and magical realism, and yet this new thing is bigger, better, more moving. Which is exactly what I felt as I read Josh Denslow's beautiful new collection Magic Can't Save Us. He made a leap, and as someone who already loves his writing, I'm happy that with this book everyone else will learn what I already know, Josh's writing is magical." - Ben Tanzer, author of After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar of Cinema, The Missing & UPSTATE