The Strange Beautiful

Carla Crujido's The Strange Beautiful is a collection of short stories that explore the lives of ten tenants in Mount Vernon Apartments in Spokane, Washington, over a century. The stories are intertwined with historical drama, melancholy fever dreams, and fairytale elements, creating a familiar and fantastic world. Crujido's masterful storytelling shows how a single place can hold a myriad of histories, how our lives are interconnected with strangers, and how our collective tales are forever repeating.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 202 pages
Publication date: 24 October 2023
Publisher: Chin Music Press

From the debut fiction writer Carla Crujido comes a delicately intertwined, fairytale-inspired collection of short stories. Part vivid historical drama, part melancholy fever dream, The Strange Beautiful centers on Mount Vernon Apartments in Spokane, Washington, offering a glimpse into the lives of ten tenants over a period of one hundred years. In the opening story, The Songbird, we meet the building's caretaker, a World War I veteran trying to rebuild his life amidst the Spanish flu pandemic. In The Telephone, a 21st-century poet's longing for a bygone era nurtures a friendship that transcends time. A 1930s department store mannequin navigates the challenges of womanhood in the surreal, darkly humorous tale, The Mannequin. And in The Suitcase, an exhausted woman scrambles to tidy up her boyfriend's unprocessed emotions, which have materialized inside boxes all over the apartment. As we witness the quiet but fraught moments of the tenants' everyday lives, these uncanny narratives create a world that is at once familiar and fantastic. A striking portrait of a city not often depicted in literature, The Strange Beautiful leads us through the streets of Spokane and the similarly evolving internal landscapes of these ten characters. Crujido's masterful storytelling shows us how a single place can hold a myriad of histories, how our lives are interconnected with strangers, and how our collective tales are forever repeating.

Dimension: 193 x 130 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781634050531