Tunneling to the Center of the Earth stretched the bounds of my imagination in startling ways. It is a collection of eleven boldly wacky stories of people in strange situations that are remotely familiar and yet wildly absurd. I found myself on a far-out planet, incredulity mounting, realizing the need to suspend disbelief, and surrendering to all that is bizarre and wonderful.

Stories are spun about:
1. a company that provides stand-in grandmothers for families that think theirs aren’t cool enough and need to be replaced,
2. individuals who spontaneously combust while riding the subway,
3. a manual to cope with a dead sister,
4. folding paper cranes, Japanese style, to contest a will,
5. unpopular teenage boys ‘devouring’ each other,
6. youths digging a tunnel through the earth to bury their unhappiness,
7. a performer who shoots himself in the face and lives to repeat it show after show,
8. a baby born with a full set of teeth,
9. cheerleading as a panacea for a teenage social pariah,
10. a museum for ordinary junk (e.g., a lifetime collection of nail clippings!),
11. getting a university degree in Catastrophe and landing a job in Worst-Case Scenario, Inc.

The stories are much more than these cryptic one-liners. To say more would spoil the fun for other readers. It seems to me that at the heart of these inventive scenarios are folks who are inherently lonely and seeking someone to love. Wilson approaches this with a light and sometimes almost imperceptible touch. The overriding sense is one of surprise and I looked forward to each story, waiting to be shocked and pleasantly teased.

Published in 2009, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth won the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award. The latter is an award for ‘outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic.’

This is my introduction to Kevin Wilson’s writing. What a trip it has been tunneling to the center of the earth! Highly recommended.

This is seriously one of the strangest collection of short stories I’ve ever read, you can definitely feel the southern Gothic trope woven within the stories as well as some very interesting Relations between larger ideas such is life and death. I think this book or this collection of short stories is more of a testament to are strange times then you may think at first.

As editor of Glint Literary Journal, I recommended this book to one of our reviewers. Her review can be found here: https://glintjournal.wordpress.com/heather-basss-review-of/

Heather Bass’s Review of Kevin Wilson’s Tunneling to the Center of the Earth

Since restrictions from COVID-19 have me spending less time wandering the mall and more time reading at home, I finally have time to tackle books on my to-read list as well as a few recommendations from others. Kevin Wilson’s Tunneling to the Center of the Earth falls into the latter column. His collection of stories should not be approached as a one-time read, enjoyable at the time but undeserving of a second thought. Each of Wilson’s short stories left behind a distinct image, like some imprint from silly putty that’s tricky to get out. Even weeks after my initial reading, I continue to see an elderly doctor marveling over a curious collection of spoons (“The Museum of Whatnot”). I see a large room filled with Scrabble tiles while dozens of desperate bodies scurry around in search of that correct letter (“Blowing Up on the Spot”).


Wilson’s characters find themselves in memorable situations involving work, relationships, and death. His prose might be judged simple, even bland, but the images and stories are not. In “Blowing Up on the Spot,” a Scrabble factory worker, named Leonard, contemplates spontaneously combusting—just as his parents did on a date night (32). As the analytically minded Leonard explains: “One evening, riding the subway home from an evening out, my parents sat in an empty subway car and spontaneously combusted. . . . They are gone, and I can accept that, or at least I’m trying to. What I can’t get around is the question of whether it could happen to me” (32-33). In between incidents at work and rendezvous with his girlfriend, Leonard grapples with his and his parents’ fate. Eventually, Leonard’s musing leads him to reconsider his job at the factory since his work takes more precedence in his life.


Wilson’s stories explore more than just working life. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth presents relationships and death as natural events rather than themes suitable for rom-coms or Greek dramas. Wilson’s “The Museum of Whatnot” teases a cute romance between Calvin, a doctor interested in “the spoon business,” and Janey, a curator for a museum featuring other people’s junk (180). Initially, Janey’s museum responsibilities—“checking the newspaper hats for silverfish” and “realigning the framed labels of apricot jars”—dominate her life, but as the doctor’s influence increases, her duties’ relevance diminishes (170). Janey and Calvin’s relationship is less a fiery passion and more a subtle attraction that has the potential to grow into a comfy marriage. The other relationships in Wilson’s stories play out similarly—characters form mild attractions or companionships. Leonard is not hopelessly in love but he relies on seeing his love interest at the end of the day. Such passion is definitely not for fans of Harlequin.


Death is also treated nonchalantly in Wilson’s work. Leonard may be hung up over his parents’ deaths but only because he believes their loss portends his future demise. Leonard doesn’t dread his imagined death. None of Wilson’s characters face death as a tragedy—eyes forever wet with tears and thoughts dwelling on what could have been. Instead, they perceive a possibility for something new. Possibly Wilson’s most beautiful story about death in this collection can be found in “Birds in the House.” A boy called Smokey oversees competition for his late grandmother’s house, Oak Hall. His father and his uncles make one thousand paper cranes to be thrown into the air; the owner of the last crane on the table inherits Oak Hall. Wilson transforms a would-be morbid story into a thing of wonder through the swirling origami:


Birds are everywhere, flying to certain death off the edge, hovering two feet over the table, or holding fast to the oak finish. Even cranes that have already fallen to the ground have been picked up again by the fans so that it is hard to tell where anything is anymore, it’s just a thick cluster of colored paper birds. (69-70)


Smokey’s love for his grandmother creeps in between his uncles’ fighting for Oak Hall and the graceful flying paper cranes; yet, Smokey reflects more on his grandmother’s life than on her death.


While Tunneling to the Center of the Earth was written before the necessity for cloth face masks and tedious social distancing left us gasping for distraction, these stories are worth a spot on must-read lists. Although the re-release of Tunneling may be motivated by the success of Wilson’s novels, The Family Fang (2011) and Nothing to See Here (2019), we should pick up this collection for what it provides us now. Wilson’s fiction reminds us of what we’ve missed due to preoccupation with current reality. He offers a glimpse of ordinary people in odd and intriguing circumstances. Here, the elderly can become grandparents for hire or a single paper crane can lead to fortune. Even without the COVID-19 pandemic, Wilson’s collection is worth a visit for those readers who want stories that linger after the turn of the last page.


Wilson, Kevin. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. Harper Perennial, 2009.

I discovered Kevin Wilson in 2020 when I read his book Nothing to See Here. It was my favorite read of 2020. I loved his writing so much that I went out and bought two of his other books. His stories are so unique and Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is no exception. This compilation of short stories was mesmerizing and the author has chosen interesting, off the wall subjects to write about. Looking forward to reading his next book!
Thank you to Harper Collins and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This quirky collection of short stories is one of my favorite reads this year. I LOVED that I never knew what I was going to get with the next tale, and none of them disappointed me. I was sucked in from the very beginning and started texting friends telling them to pick up a copy so I could talk to them about these weird and wonderful stories!

I knew I loved Kevin Wilson from around page 12 of Nothing to See Here, so when I saw he had other books, I knew I had to seek them out. I'm so glad I did, and I'm going to keep right on reading until I'm done with all of his works. He writes odd but lovely, strange but warm characters, and I feel for them even when what they're doing is unbelieveable and bonkers. Highly recommend!

A fabulous short story collection from one of my all-time favorite authors. His unique voice and crazy story scenarios make this collection surreal, funny, and heartfelt.

I really wanted to like this book but unfortunately I could not get into it. I do not think this was the one for me. The premise was super interesting, but towards the end to me it just fell apart.

4.5 stars.

I really enjoyed these stories, all of which had some sort of explosive, strange, magical, or surreal element to them. The main character in one story ends up working at a Scrabble tile sorting factory after her parents spontaneously combust, for example, and a trio of friends in another spends their days literally tunneling into the earth and hiding underground from their post-college existential dread. My one minor qualm is that Wilson only notes a character's race when that character is non-white, assuming whiteness as the default. But aside from that, this collection is imaginative, darkly funny, and delightfully bizarre.

I am not a huge fan of short stories, but I thoroughly enjoyed this collection by Kevin Wilson. Full of interesting characters and points of view, this is one I can honestly recommend.

Honestly just a brilliant collection of strange, mesmerizing stories. They're fresh, original, witty, and just a little unhinged--perfect sunny day reading. Wilson has a talent for communicating all-too-familiar emotions through the most bizarre of situations.

Veer into the peculiar with the collection's namesake, "Tunneling to the Center of the Earth". Other favorites included the ridiculous "Blowing Up on the Spot", casual hilarity of "The Choir Director Affair", and "Go Fight Win" as a gently melancholy tale of identity.

When I saw Netgalley offer a collection of short stories written by Kevin Wilson, the author of Nothing to See Here, I expected quirkiness and that is what I got. Although this was first published in 2009, it has recently been republished with a new preface written by Wilson and I loved getting a glimpse into his calling to write. Wilson’s creativity shines through the imagined occupations of his characters, including an older lady working as a “stand-in” grandmother to unsuspecting children and a man who works in a Scrabble factory whose job is to pick out all the Q’s in the massive collection of tiles that land on the floor. Each story was peculiar and eccentric and embraced that strangeness of what attracts us in life.I recommend this to anyone who liked the quirkiness of Nothing to See Here and who would enjoy tastes of this in smaller doses.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Publishers for the eArc in exchange for my honest review.

Surreal and speculative short stories. Many of these stories are based on mundane experiences, working in a factory, etc. but have delightfully unexpected twists. Reminded me of Karen Russell and Diane Cook.

I did not expect to love this story collection as much as I did.
Kevin Wilson’s writing stunned me in the best way. I found this story collecting funny, weird, and at the same time important.
Each story had a beautiful message around it, a message that can mean different things from one person to another that reads it.
I fell in love with Blowing Up On The Spot, it completely broke me, in the best way possible.

Thank you to NetGalley and my friends at HarperCollins Publishing for gifting me with an ARC of Kevin Wilson’s short story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is a trippy, explosive look into the quirky imagination of Kevin Wilson. Though I generally do not appreciate short story collections, this book was a treasure trove full of delightful tales. I particularly enjoyed Grand Stand-In ( a rent a grandma story), Worst Case Scenario ( literally my worse fears printed) Go, Fight, Win (a lonely cheerleader and a misfit tween) and The Museum of Whatnot ( a collection of ordinary objects made extraordinary). There are 12 stories in this collection and honestly not a dud amongst them. Originally published in 2009, this collection is now being re-released September 2020.

Given the commercial success Kevin Wilson has experienced, this earlier work showcases the beginnings of his entertaining off kilter view of the world. His stories seem destined for the big screen, in that techno-colored dream world we all wish to escape to. Lots of good humor and insightful observations are aplenty in this collection.
Definitely pick up this book.
You won’t be disappointed.

What a great collection of short stories! These are stories that seem to take place in our world but they don't. They can't. They are quirky and unique. All of these people put in strange places with strange things to do. We just watch them move through this strange, normal place. We are along for the journey. I chose this book because of my previous experience with this author, a young woman asked to care for children who spontaneously combust, so I shouldn't have really been surprised at his ability to make the strange and unusual work as someone's everyday. I'm definitely seeking out more from this author.

Kevin Wilson is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors ("Nothing to See Here" was my favorite novel of 2019). This short story collection is a homerun. Wilson's writing is sharp, quirky, and heartwarming. I truly enjoyed all the stories here. He knows he to blend humor with heart and also, mundane life with a touch of magical realism. The highlights of this collection include: "Mortal Kombat", "The Shooting Man", "Go, Fight, Win", and "The Museum of Whatnot". This book was originally released a decade ago and is being re-released with a new forward by Wilson. I'll read anything by this talented man, he's the real deal.

Thank you, Netgalley and Harper Collins for the digital ARC.

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is a collection of weird and wonderful short stories from one of my new favorite authors. I recently read Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson, a novel about siblings who spontaneously combust and was surprised by how endearing it was with such a ridiculous premise. When Ecco offered up an ARC for the latest edition of this collection first published in 2009, I couldn’t pass it up!

All eleven stories are southern gothic gems with quirky characters, highly creative plots, and heavy doses of heart and humor.
I’ll give you a brief summary on three of my favorites in the collection:

Grand Stand-In: An employee of the Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider called Grand Stand-In serves as the grandmother to five families with deceased, ill, or awful grandparents. She literally becomes the grandma: a backstory, along with doctored photos to include her and studying eight generations of family history, allows her to seamlessly join the family with plenty of phone calls and visits.

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Three friends who recently graduated college find their degrees are meaningless.
“We never realized that we were supposed to be preparing ourselves for future lives, self-sustainable lives with jobs and all the other things like family cars and magazine subscriptions. And so I think it was that kind of disconnection from what we were expected to do that made us get out the shovels. It’s the only reason I can figure.”
Faced with uncertainty about their futures, the three friends begin digging in the far corner of the yard, first down and eventually sideways, creating tunnels underneath their town in an effort to postpone their lives.

The Museum of Whatnot: A woman is the caretaker and sole employee of the Carl Jensen Museum of Whatnot, a museum dedicated to the preservation of ordinary junk made unique. The most common remark left on the comment card involves the word weird. A permanent exhibit on the second floor consists of over 400 spoons, which a local doctor comes to view every Wednesday. When the narrator discovers more spoons, she learns why the spoons are so important to the doctor and a beautiful relationship unfolds.
“There is a point where the things you take on begin to overflow and then, finally, become interesting. You live with it, walk around it, and the randomness of it all becomes part of you. There is, I see, something pleasing about allowing something, however trivial, to fill up your life, to stop and look around at the space you inhabit and say, ‘I want this.’”

If you’re a new fan of Kevin Wilson and/or enjoy quirky stories with a lot of heart, pick up this short story collection!

Thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Tunneling to the Center of the Earth is scheduled for release on September 1, 2020.

Here we a have a fantasy short story collection. First thing to note is that I truly appreciate this author's ability to create off-the-wall unique jobs for his characters. Here are a few that stuck out: older people who sign up to be stand-in (e.g rental) grandparents, a man who works in a Scrabble factory locating all the Q tiles, and a man who works in a noise factory. Wilson has a way of making these outlandish jobs sound absolutely realistically real and in my opinion they were the best bits of his stories.

Personal favorite story of the lot was a woman who worked as a curator for the Museum of Whatnot which is essentially a storage depot for other people's miscellaneous 'junk' like spoons, rubber bands, cutout magazine letters, etc. I loved the description of the museum and how he managed to convey the loneliness/futility of working in such a place. Also, the curator herself is rather an odd choice for the role as 1. she considers all of the items in her care as 'junk' and 2. she absolutely abhors keeping bric-a-brac for herself and is merciless about discarding of anything remotely resembling sentimental.

If you're not into a smidge of magical realism then this one might be hit-or-miss for you, I'm afraid. I should also point out that there were a few stories in this collection that made me feel absolutely uncomfortable. Like 'I may need to walk away from this book or at least move onto the next story' uncomfortable. This of course is most likely unique only to myself (I tend to be a bit squeamish about certain topics) and I don't think this should deter anyone from picking this book up but I did want to give a bit of a warning. Several of these stories are dark in tone and deal in subjects like: suicide, mental health issues, incest, and death. You have been warned.

𝙄𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙛 𝙤𝙣𝙚’𝙨 𝙤𝙗𝙨𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙜𝙤𝙡𝙙𝙛𝙞𝙨𝙝, 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙨 𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙚 𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬.

Kevin Wilson’s novel, 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘦𝘦 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦, smoldered with strange children and this collection of wildly entertaining stories are just as peculiar. His introduction alone engaged me, a telling of where his weirdness comes from. I don’t care how ‘put together’ you think you are, we are all weird creatures but Wilson channels his into stories.

𝑰𝒏 𝑮𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅-In a woman becomes a stand-in Grandma for families, working for a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider. Why would anyone want a fake granny? What happens if the real meemaw passes over to the great beyond? How long do you stand-in? This managed to be funny and sad.


𝘽𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙐𝙥 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩– Leonard counts his steps, cares for his unstable brother, sorts Scrabble tiles in a factory and tries not to combust. Sometimes a man has to decide whether to quit or keep going.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝑺𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑯𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒌: 𝑨 𝑮𝒖𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝑺𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝑩𝒐𝒚𝒔– A ‘sensitive’ boy lives off of last memories and sensory triggers yearning for his dead sister. Methods of self-preservation, strange uses for pennies, lightning, and a weird family tree that branches into a generational Dead Sistory carry him on a wave of longing for what has vanished forever.

𝑩𝒊𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆– The Collier men gather in their family home, a dilapidated plantation in Tennessee, folding paper birds to settle their deceased mother/grandmother’s estate. The hatred the brothers have for each other is a feud, it seems to the young boy telling the story, that his Japanese born grandmother could only finally escape through death. We carry so much in our blood, can rage be inherited?

𝑴𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝑲𝒐𝒎𝒃𝒂𝒕 is a story of friendship, trivia, and forbidden desires that escalate into violence between two teenage boys who ‘do not fit correctly into the spaces available to them.’


𝑻𝒖𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑬𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒉– recent college graduates and friends struggle with establishing themselves and decide to dig into the earth to pass the time, are they hollowing out the earth to fill up the abyss that feels like their future?

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑴𝒂𝒏 is the eeriest tale in the collection for me. When a couple go to see a sideshow and the peculiar oddity one man performs disturbs it causes a rift in their relationship. But it is what happens when Guster attempts to unearth the secret that his life changes drastically.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒐𝒊𝒓 𝑫𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓 𝑨𝒇𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒓 (𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑩𝒂𝒃𝒚’𝒔 𝑻𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒉) is a story about a baby with a full set of choppers, it’s father’s affair and our narrator, the poor S.O.B caught up in the drama. It is about ‘the evaporation of love’. Though unsettled by the child’s teeth, he thinks about it’s future and how everything changes. For such a short tale, there are meaningful thoughts about relationships, love and how things evolve.

𝑮𝒐, 𝑭𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕, 𝑾𝒊𝒏 is about a cheerleader who doesn’t really feel the spirit and only cheers under her mother’s influence. Cheering, her mother remembers from her own youth, was the track to acceptance, popularity and a happy adolescence, just what she needs as the new girl. Penny, however, is stirred out of her ambivalence by the presence of the odd, younger boy across the street who has eyes only for her. The boy is strange and yet…

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑴𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒖𝒎 𝒐𝒇 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒏𝒐𝒕– Janey is the sole caretaker of the Mow, a musuem dedicated to other people’s junk, reborn here as eclectic collections. A hoarders trove indeed and an odd career for someone who can’t muster up a smidgen of sentimentality herself. What could she, a person who refuses to keep much of anything herself, learn working amidst mountains of seemingly valueless whatnots some folks spent their lifespan revering? It’s a strangely tender story.

𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒕-𝑪𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝑺𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒐 a field agent sees the worst in every situation, for the benefit of those wishing to prevent all sorts of hard-luck and horrors the universe can kick up. When he meets a young woman with a baby, he leaves her distraught with all the possibilities of impending doom, inviting anger from her husband. It is about hope when the odds are stacked against us.

Kevin Wilson’s imagination takes peculiar turns, he writes about the odd happenings you hear about but never witness, like spontaneous combustion and it makes me wonder what sort of carnival of thoughts goes on in his head. I find myself smirking, remembering the magnetism stories and shows that chronicle mysteries of the universe have over me. Then I think nothing is more mysterious then our own darn selves. I had fun with these stories, even when they made my heart ache.

Publication Date: September 1, 2020

HarperCollins Publishers

Ecco

Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Sept 1 2020

I remember being in high school and stumbling onto Kevin Wilson's "Tunneling to the Center of the Earth" in my high school library just as they were about to close down for the day. I started the first story, "Good Stand-Ins" on the bus ride back and was instantly hooked into Wilson's bizarre, sad-happy world of stand-in actors for family members, exploding people working in Scrabble factories and elegies of dead sisters. It was exciting, revolting, and all around engrossing, a perfect accompaniment for my gothic persona.

In the intervening years, I changed a little bit, but these stories remained just as enchanting as they did back then. Highly recommend checking it out!