A sundry collection of short stories by multi-talented, 'multi-degreed' NY psychiatrist, Jacob M. Appel. In this collection, the author presents a rather quirky look at love in all its many manifestations. Overall, I enjoyed the collection but the first few stories fell flat and the collection picked up midway through.

This book took two tries. On the first attempt I approached as the description on Goodreads said: a collection of love stories. I started reading it and quit. It did not take me at all.

Then, I decided to give NetGalley its dues and read the book and started again. And the second time I absolutely loved this quirky, funny and twisted read. 

The Liars' Asylum is as much about love as it is about lies. It is about lies. The lies we tell to survive, to protect our loved ones' feelings, to get ahead, to fit in. The white lies.

This collection, from artificial giraffes to truth rain, is full of unexpected surprises and peculiar niceties. The Liars' Asylum is read in one breath. Summer time read for sure.

4.5 Stars.

THE LIARS' ASYLUM is a CRAZY good collection of eight short stories by Jacob M. Appel....complete with a super cool book cover....and incredibly absorbing writing.

Was all set to post my review with comments about each individual story, but decided these shorts are better read going in cold turkey.

I will say....I experienced laughter, shock and horror....more than once....was not bored for even a moment....and thoroughly entertained.

Even if you're not a fan of short stories of fiction, you just might want to check this one out. Definitely a favorite collection for me .

Many thanks to NetGalley and Jacob Appel for the complimentary ebook in exchange for a review.

Book 64 of my 2017 Reading Challenge
read from October 13 - 24

**I received an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley and would like to thank the author and/or publisher for the opportunity to read and honestly review it**

The Liars' Asylum by Jacob M. Appel

Summary (via NetGalley)
The frustrations of romantic love in its various guises - a domineering kindergarten teacher for a dashing artificial foliage designer, a suicidal physicist for his star student, a dialysis patient at a sleep-away camp for the camp owner's daughter - provide the common theme for the stories in Jacob M. Appel's seventh collection. We meet a psychiatrist dabbling with infidelity during a crisis in which rain turns into truth serum, a Finnish-American soldier charged with facilitating his commanding officer's extra-marital affair, and a couple transporting a wealthy, "locked-in" patient across the Piedmont to his new nursing home.
Appel's literary short fiction offers a quirky window into the pangs and promise of love.

My Opinion
I loved the line, " 'I'm the cart,' I answered. 'Not the horse.' "

I enjoy the author and will continue reading him.

Screw in the light bulb and start reading!

Jacob Appel could write a story about a burnt-out light bulb and I’d be chomping at the bit to read it. In fact, he’d probably make me believe the bulb looked cool all burnt out. Or maybe he’d convince me that it wasn’t really burnt out at all, and he’d find a way to do something great with all the imaginary light. Any way you cut it, he would make the story fascinating.

What an engrossing bunch of love stories this is, not a one of them typical! Many are set in the land of quirk, just far out enough to be fun. Besides, really now, how can you possibly go wrong with a book called The Liars’ Asylum? The story by that name, which is the last story in the collection, is one of my favorites—it is so imaginative! It’s all I can do not to tell you what it’s about—hand covering mouth, hand covering mouth!—but I think it’s more fun to go into it cold. Let me just say that maybe you should think twice about walking in the rain. If you have secrets, that is. There. Have I intrigued you enough? I didn’t do too great of a job of covering my mouth now, did I?

Appel is getting famous for his quirk. I think the quirk works because he adds regular people who confront their realities in the same way we do--with longing, confusion, indecisiveness, caution. The settings are often quirky (and occasionally surreal), but the emotions are always real. Typical people in quandaries, in knots, verklempt. In fact, now that I think of it, most of the characters in the stories are conflicted—I’m sure that’s what makes the collection so powerful. Feeling torn is such a common state of being, and one that is full of internal drama. You would think that conveying this would be hard in a short story. Appel makes it looks easy.

I never ever thought “When will this story end?” Never ever thought the ending was terrible. Never ever thought the story was missing something. Never ever wanted it to go somewhere different. Never ever thought it was predictable. These are all great never-evers to have!

There are some ambiguous endings, which I usually hate, but they didn’t bother me here. The endings are quiet yet powerful. Oops, wash my mouth out with soap!! (My excuse for lying is honorable: I love these stories so much, I don’t want to complain about anything.) But in fact, some of the stories ended TOO quietly for me. But then I’d repress my slight disappointment and think, no, the story is perfect. This is how real life is. Not everything ends with a bang.

Okay, now that I’ve admitted I was a tiny bit let down by some of the quiet endings, I might as well admit that I wasn’t totally in love with the first four stories. Wait! Yes, I liked them a lot, but they didn’t seem as tight as the last four stories. There is a little too much description thrown in here and there. We’re not talking yawn city or anything—there wasn’t a bushel full of useless information—but I noticed I raced past the descriptions in search of Appel’s brilliant dialogue, action, and insights.

Ah, but those last four stories, they were perfection. Even the titles are total knockouts: Picklocks in Oblivion, Summer of Interrogatory Subversion, When Love Was an Angel’s Kidney, and Liars’ Asylum. And each story lives up to its weird and intriguing title. I’m pretty sure I’ll remember each of these stories and sigh when I think of them—now that’s a pretty good indicator of a good story. Oh, and did I mention that all the stories are well-written? They sooo are (why I just morphed into valley-girl speak, I’ll never know). I’m really trying to give you a sales job here because I think this collection is so good I want everyone to check this author out; he deserves more attention.

Several of the stories touch on ethical issues, such as infidelity, organ donation, May-December relationships. There is serious, there is funny, there is odd—Appel does just the right combo and it works every time. And a few of the stories have twists that are oh so cool. Plus I loved that I never knew what was going to happen. Oh, and did I mention there are nuggets of wisdoms to be found in these stories, too?

Here are a few examples of this wisdom:

“Closeness without conflict, as they say, exists only in the cemetery.”

“Nothing helps you understand your own heritage, I discovered, as much as explaining it to a foreigner.”

“But hugging does not cure desire.”

“…war never determines who is right, only who is remaining.”

Here’s a yummy literary sentence:

“My life—up until that evening—had always seemed something shaped by others, a lump of sand to be sculpted by the human sea.”

And this is one of my favorite lines in the collection. It wins the prize for funny:

“Self-restraint is not Janine’s strong suit. She’s capable of serving venison to Bambi.”

A note about this author: Appel is not only a writer, but also a doctor and a lawyer!! This floors me. How can this possibly be true? Someone asked him when he found time to write. He says he spends 99 percent of his time practicing medicine, leaving him only 1 percent of the time to write. I’m thinking this guy cannot get much sleep, especially since he’s so prolific. And his writing is just brilliant! Check out his profile. He has some interesting answers to his readers’ questions.

I discovered Appel a few years ago when I read Einstein’s Beach House—oh what a great short story collection that is!! I own and plan to read his other works as well. Even if short stories aren’t your genre, I think you’ll enjoy these gems.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

Short story collections are my favorite genre, mostly because it gives you a chance to sample the writer's range of storytelling. These stories are excellent because of Jacob Appel's wit, not because the situations or characters are all that compelling. It leaves wishing he would write about his personal life and his experience working in medicine. I am sure there are some interesting stories he could tell that are more personal.

I have quite a few of Jacob Appel’s work on my to-read list, but this is the first one I’ve actually read. By far one of the best single-author anthologies I’ve read in many years. Contemporary and subtle, with hints of dark and satirical commentary.

-Bait and Switch – A young girl gets coerced by her aunt to go and work with a man to paint foliage because her aunt has made herself believe he will be her next husband. Things do not go as expected.

-Good Enough for Guppies – Sheila’s 78 old mom is getting remarried to a much younger man, and Sheila has some very strong feelings about it.

-Prisoners of the Multiverse – A female student’s beloved professor commits suicide. And there’s more than one person that believes she should know more about his reasons than she claims.

-The Frying Finn – A Finnish American soldier assists in his commanding officer having an extra-marital affair, while also having one of his own.

-Picklocks In Oblivion – A man is driving a locked in patient to said patient’s daughter’s wedding, and brought along his own girlfriend for company. While on the road the girlfriend decides she knows the best kind of sympathy to offer. Wow. Just wow. This one ended and I just sat there wide-eyed for a moment as I processed it. I did not see that coming, and this one ended up being my 2nd favorite of the collection.

-The Summer of Interrogatory Subversion – A new 28-year old tenant and the owner’s 18-year old daughter start “dating”.

-When Love Was an Angel’s Kidney – A girl tries to convince her parents, who run a camp for children with severe physical ailments, and the camp’s doctor that she wants to give a kidney to the 14-year old she is in love with, and accidentally discovers something she shouldn’t have.

-The Liar’s Asylum – A night shift doctor is doing psych evaluations when a supposed truth rain comes. He is inundated with individuals who claim that when they were hit by the rain, they began word-vomiting whatever was in their head, regardless of who was with them or what it was, and ultimately say that the rain is something of a truth-serum. Is it really “truth rain”, or is something else the more realistic cause? The title story of the volume, and by far my favorite. It is a psychological study, a satire on religion and mass hysteria, and really makes you think about how you would handle it if there really were a “truth rain”.

Highly recommended to contemporary readers and fans of realistic fiction. These aren’t HEAs, and feel like glimpses into the lives of real people. They are complex and psychological, and very thought-provoking.

I received this collection via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

A collection of odd short stories, all revolving around the common subject of romance. They were just all too strange for my tastes. I usually enjoy short stories sharing a common theme, but these were just outside of my box, I guess! I have enjoyed a couple of other offerings from this author, so I'm thinking this is just not to my particular liking.......I just couldn't get into it.....
I received this e-book from NetGalley, in return for my own fair/honest review, & all opinions are my own.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35664645-the-liars-asylum" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Liars' Asylum" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500218997m/35664645.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35664645-the-liars-asylum">The Liars' Asylum</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6884139.Jacob_M_Appel">Jacob M. Appel</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2163738384">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I’m not usually a fan of short stories, I always seem to want more from each one that I read. This one was different, and just so good. This touched on a lot of different subjects, a spinster uses her niece to try and find love, an older woman marrying a very young man, a teachers suicide, euthanasia, infidelity, a rain that makes people honest and truthful.and a couple other subjects. I really enjoyed all of them! I’m looking forward to reading more from this author, especially one that he sent to me hisself, Einstein’s Beach House!<br /><br />Thank you to NetGalley, Black Lawrence Press, and of course Jacob M. Appel for the chance to read this!
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/12851291-karen">View all my reviews</a>

“The Liars’ Asylum” is the first book I read by the author. Almost all the stories impressed me. I read them one by one instead of all in one sitting because I wanted to process every one of them separately. The best stories (in my opinion) were the ones about death and illnesses. The author delicately researched these topics without imposing any opinions or conclusions on the reader.

This book contains eight short stories which as the summary tells are about the frustrations of romantic love in its various guises. They are not your typical love stories. They contain stories about suicide, murder, marital affairs, and so on. I am typically not a short story reader, but the summary of this book intrigued me and the stories did not let me down. Each story wanted me to keep reading as soon as it was finished, so I completed this book in one sitting. While this book is about love stories, these are not your usual happily ever after. I enjoyed the edginess of the author and the stories. I am giving this book a 3.5 star rating rounded to a 4-star rating.

This is a collection of eight short stories. Each one is solid and thought-provoking. They're tales about the frustrations of romantic love. For me, nothing seemed to be missing from any of the stories. I really liked "Prisoners of the Multiverse" which tells the tale of a suicidal physicist and his top student, and "The Summer of Interrogatory Subversion" which is about a young girl turning eighteen and her mother renting out their basement to a graduate student who looked like a medieval shepherd and who was deemed creepy by the girl's best friend.

THE LIARS' ASYLUM WRITTEN BY JACOB M. APPEL

SHORT STORY COLLECTION. Jacob M. Appel's new impressive collection is highly entertaining and enjoyable. I love this author's work which examines many different issues dealing with a vast variety of subjects. Sometimes I ponder the stories for hours after reading them. The stories in this collection will not disappoint. This author has a very extensive list of vocations varying from Bioethicist, Doctor and lawyer, not to mention outstanding author. I enjoyed every one of his previous work. He wrote a fabulous novel called THE MASK OF SANITY, which deals with psychopathy. I highly recommend any of this author's previous work along with this new collection called THE LIARS'S ASYLUM. FIVE STARS111111111

Thank you to Net Galley, Jacob M. Appel and Publisher for the ARC in exchange for a Fair and Honest Review

Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.

A psychiatrist tries to make sense of a barrage of new patients, all with the same complaint. A person who excels at saying nothing, the dual purpose of a plastic bag, an 'epidemic of honesty', and 'an audience of none'. A question lingers, do angels have kidneys?

These short stories are pure slices of life, but tweaked, and some of them pulled asunder. This author has such a way of putting things. Offbeat, capricious, and quite wonderful.

And......
.......this is THE *Jacob M. Appel* I fell in love with three years ago....when he was a still considered a newbie author himself — gifting another talent of his to the world at large - to his ‘already’ many gifts.
When I first met him ( not in person.... simply stalked him) - I tried to find a way to fix him up with my older daughter ( they are the same age)-— but since that didn’t happen - I just kept on reading his books!

I’ve enjoyed a couple of Jacob’s novels - one not so much: and THANK HEAVENS -if I liked EVERY SINGLE STORY JACOB HAS EVER WRITTEN - which are many in a short amount of time: — Steven King move over—

Another wonderful, quirky, thought-provoking book by the clever and brilliant, Jacob M Appel. Appel's short story collections have entertained and pleasantly baffled his reading fans for several years now. This new book, of course, is no exception. Don't miss out. Read this soon. Highly recommend.

EXCERPT: My best friend that spring was Lacey Moretti. Soon enough we would drift apart, our natural differences overcoming our common history, so when I saw her at the twentieth reunion last year, where Lacey gulped champagne from a slipper and made a sloppy pass at every unhitched male within groping distance, I could hardly remember what had drawn us together on long-ago evenings studying the polarity of magnets and the trajectories of cannon balls. Yet in those final months at Laurendale, we were truly inseparable--so much so that when a third former classmate sensed the tension between us at the reunion, she'd confessed she'd always suspected we'd been lovers. The reality was that we'd both been far too innocent for anything like that. - Prisoners of the Multiverse

The wipers swept the windshield hypnotically, and when the rain stopped, the rubber blades scraped furiously across the dry glass. I didn't even register the sound until Sheila reached across the steering column and snapped them off.
"What can a forty-six year old man possibly see in my mother?" she demanded. "I'll tell you what! He's either after a green card or he's after her money. "
"Or both, " I offered.
Sheila glared at me. "Don't you dare take her side. "
"I'm not taking sides, Sheila. "
"How can you not take sides?" she snapped. "That's like not taking sides about the Holocaust. Not taking sides is the same thing as taking sides. "
Sheila had worked in the creative division at an advertising agency before we married. She has a winning slogan for every argument. - Good Enough For Guppies

THE BLURB: SHORT STORY COLLECTION: The frustrations of romantic love in its various guises—a domineering kindergarten teacher for a dashing artificial foliage designer, a suicidal physicist for his star student, a dialysis patient at a sleep-away camp for the camp owner’s daughter—provide the common theme for the stories in Jacob M. Appel’s seventh collection. We meet a psychiatrist dabbling with infidelity during a crisis in which rain turns into truth serum, a Finnish-American soldier charged with facilitating his commanding officer’s extra-marital affair, and a couple transporting a wealthy, “locked-in” patient across the Piedmont to his new nursing home. Appel’s literary short fiction offers a quirky window into the pangs and promise of love.

MY THOUGHTS: I have a special place reserved both in my heart and on my shelves for Jacob Appel's books. I have almost the full set and they are on the shelf right beside my favorite reading chair. It is a collection that I dip into frequently and The Liars' Asylum will take pride of place amongst them.

This is yet another wonderful collection of eight short stories from an extremely talented writer. The focus in this collection is love. But they are not your traditional love stories. They range from tales of first love to that of a last love, and everything in between. And don't expect happy ever after. There is duplicity and truth, desire and rejection, hope and despair, success (of sorts) and failure.

Appel demonstrates an excellent understanding of human character. From the young couple who become more interested in scoring points over each other than in the truth of their relationship, to the desperate for a husband Aunt Jill, all these characters are people we know, we can relate to and, if we are honest, there is probably more than a little bit of ourselves in there too.

Appel has a wonderful sense of the ridiculous which he crafts into clever and believable stories. Another winner from a favorite author.

Publication date is October 15, 2017.

Thank you to author Jacob M Appel, Black Lawrence Press and Netgalley for providing a copy of The Liars' Asylum for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the 'about' page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com.
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Jacob M. Appel’s THE LIARS’ ASYLUM is another collection of eight imaginative, addictive, and unpredictable short stories, on the heels of last year’s exceptional collections—THE TOPLESS WIDOW OF HERKIMER STREET and COULROPHOBIA & FATA MORGANA.

From the opening sentence of the first story (“Bait and Switch”), “Aunt Jill had been courting Mitch W. at the Citarella fish counter for eight relentless months…when the giraffe painter swept her off of her swollen feet” we are welcomed right back to Jacob M. Appel’s world with settings dappled in rich details that never overrun the stories—lush leaves with distinctive genealogy and geography, artificial yet authentic; reticulated giraffes and Kordofan giraffes that seem at the moment of monumental importance; the tongue-pleasing constellations and their promises, and pet stores where “the atmosphere was warm and stifling, an aromatic potpourri of cat litter and pepper fronds and the musk of energized hamsters.”

The writer draws a winning hand of memorable—and often startling—characters, engrossing plots with a few jolting story turns (throw in a plastic bag or noises behind a doctor’s door, and expect the unexpected), matters of deception (albeit “useful,” well-intentioned, or even frenzied sociopathic), and love—young love, old second-chance love, love through the strainer of sisu or disappointment, love with one-upmanship, sacrificial love, and surreal love laid bare in a Truth Storm. The touches of wit in a narrator’s unfolding thoughts or well-placed, believable dialogue add to these eight stories, without a weak story in the group. And getting to visit Oblivion twice, as well as the High Noon Saloon, and Camp Glomerulus only add to the strength of this writer’s continued talents to satisfy his readers. Those of us who are addicted to his works—in several genres—light up when a new book comes out. As for me, one of those who anticipates and tries to not to gulp his work the moment it is available, THE LIARS’ ASYLUM is a satisfying, prized addition to my shelf of his books—one to be reread, savored, and purchased and given as gifts.

Thank you to Jacob M. Appel, Black Lawrence Press, and Netgalley for early access to this fine book.

The Liar's Asylum by Jacob M. Appel is an outstanding collection of short stories, primarily about human quirks and foibles, and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Some of them are laugh out loud funny, and some are more serious, but each one has a unique twist that left me smiling.

I had forgotten who the author of these stories is as I was reading them, and about halfway through I said to myself, "Hmm. This writing is a lot like the writing of Jacob Appel," who is one of my favorite writers (I think I have read and adored everything he's written). Well, ha ha, the joke was on me when I got to the end and read the author's bio. Kind of cool to recognize someone's style without knowing you'd done that. Dr. Appel is a truly gifted writer, a keen observer of the human condition, and the ability to transform something seemingly mundane into something profound.

I loved these stories. I hope he writes more, and soon.