Some Possible Solutions

"I love Helen Phillips's wild, brilliant, eccentric brain. Her vision flashes down like a lightning bolt into everyday terrors--having a baby, caring for a sick relative, raising a child in a city suffocating for lack of green space--but in a way so wonderfully awry that every single story in Some Possible Solutions has a freshness to it that comes as a shock to the reader's system."
—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

"This stunning collection establishes Helen Philips as one of the most interesting and talented writers working today. In atmosphere and setting, her stories are often reminiscent of Kafka and Atwood, yet her voice and style are entirely her own. A fascinating, unsettling, and beautifully written work."
—Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

"Helen Phillips sings like a Siren on the page (if a Siren also had a killer sense of humor). The short stories in Some Possible Solutions feature doppelgangers and sister-savants, impossible staircases and surreal city parks; they swing open like doors onto rich, strange worlds, which, on closer inspection, reveal themselves to be our own...These tales are true originals, shining their eerie, lovely lights on the water and asking questions that linger."
—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

"Things happen that cannot happen. Marriages, motherhood, dinner parties, the future — Helen Phillips shows us the uncanny seams of ordinary lives and wishes. What is the purpose of stories as strange, as lovely, as unsettling as these? There’s the joy the reader takes in Phillips’s sentences, of course, and her way of seeing. But there’s also the sense that we have been invited on a desperately needed tour of our own dreams, nightmares, premonitions in which Phillips will be our guide. I recommend the experience to any and all — this is an essential collection."
—Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

"The short stories in this darkly absorbing collection remind us of the hope and humanity, the warmth, joy, and love that can be found in even the bleakest circumstances. One of the many remarkable things about Phillips' fiction is that, even as she conjures unsettlingly grim dystopian futures, which seem to be an unfortunate extension of today's urban reality, or fixes her focus on untidy aspects of the here and now, she reveals something essential, enduring, and glitteringly beautiful about our most personal relationships...Darkly delicious collection...Phillips' sneakily optimistic stories are all about finding hope in even the bleakest situations...Phillips proves yet again that she is an intuitive, emotionally resonant writer who is willing to consider some of life's biggest questions and offer, yes, a few possible solutions."
—Kirkus STARRED review

"High concepts and sly emotion animate this solid collection of allegorical fiction...A feel of the fantastic...playfulness and discovery...characterizes the collection as a whole"
—Publishers Weekly