Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of An Oral History of Atlantis, publishing July 29, 2025.

This collection of sixteen interconnected short stories feels like stepping into a world just slightly tilted off its axis. Ed Park blends humor, melancholy, and strangeness in equal measure—where lives are told through forgotten password hints, actors record commentary tracks alone in dark rooms, and ordinary moments conceal unexpected messages. Each story stands on its own, but together they create a larger mosaic about disconnection, memory, and the small absurdities that shape our lives.

The writing is sharp and inventive, with surreal premises that still manage to carry emotional weight. Some pieces are quick bursts of humor, others linger with a quiet sadness, but all share a sense of curiosity about the odd patterns of human existence.

While a few stories didn’t land as strongly for me, the overall effect is playful, thought-provoking, and strangely moving. Park’s voice is one I’ll gladly return to—his ability to find truth in the peculiar is what makes this collection so distinctive.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

This set of interconnected short stories was fine, but not thrilling. Some of the stories were engaging, others were less compelling, but overall the collection as a whole felt somewhat forgettable; very few of these stories ended up making a lasting impression on me. I did, however, appreciate how much the collection leaned into the weird; the world that these stories inhabited was delightfully strange and surreal, a bizarre half-step away from our own world, and it lived in that strangeness without explanation or apology.

Overall, not a bad read by any means, but not a standout for me; and I'd certainly give the author's work another spin in the future. Thanks so much to Random House and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

Ed Park’s An Oral History of Atlantis is sharp, funny, and sneakily tender—a collection that roams from absurd set pieces to moments of startling intimacy without losing its rhythm. Across sixteen stories, Park finds the sweet spot where the surreal and the everyday blur: a man unspools his life through half-forgotten passwords, a washed-up actor riffs through a DVD commentary, a college student wonders if he’s actually a robot.

The humor is dry and inventive, but never at the expense of the characters. Even in the most outlandish scenarios, there’s a pulse of recognition—people aging out of their own lives, trying to connect, trying to remember what mattered. Park has a gift for revealing the exact moment when the present tips into memory, and he makes it sting a little even as you laugh.

Each story stands on its own, but together they leave a lingering sense of how strange, funny, and fleeting it all is.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ed Park displayed brilliance in this book, but some of it went a little over my head, I think. Didn't seem to fully grasp, and therefore be engaged in some of the stories. Also, he had a few references to transgender people- and as a trans person myself, I didn't appreciate the incorrect grammar using the terminology and less-than-great view of this population through each of the characters.

But a few stood out as funny and witty with great prose.

My particular favorites were the opening story ("A Note to My Translator") and "Slide to Unlock;" followed by "An Accurate Account," "The Gift," and "Watch Your Step."

Ed Park's collection of short works is funny - often hilarious - but somewhat heartless. Almost all of the characters are out of sync with their world and stuck in passionless alienation. And they get little sympathy from the author. Taken one at a time, each is sharply written, the characters are drawn with a few colorful strokes, and you are pulled into their skewed world. And they're funny! Read as a whole, on the other hand, the author's detachment from his characters wore me down and left me feeling me pretty bleak.

I suggest reading this book in bite-size pieces; maybe a story or two a week. More than that, and you run the risk of turning into one of Park's poor lost characters.

I have been interested in Ed Park for a while and this was a good first exposure to his writing. All of these stories are slightly weird and often have main characters that are outsiders or misfits which is very appealing to me as a reader. My favorite stories were The Gift- about an enigmatic college professor at a podunk school, Watch Your Step- a Korean spy dealing with a nepo baby, and Slide to Unlock- our passwords and memories. I will definitely read more from this author.

**edit to add that I REALLY appreciate when there is a cover for the arcs on my ereader! I am MUCH more likely to remember to read them if they have a cover!

**Initial Reaction**: 9

**Characters:** 8

**Setting:** 8

**Plot:** 9

**Pace:** 9

**Style:** 9

**Ending:** 8

**Enjoyment:** 9

69 / 16 = 4.3125

Rounded Rating = 4.25

This collection of short stories is a delight. Funny funny, darkly funny, not funny but all charming. Experimental and experiential. One or two read like long poems. It would be hard to categorize them into a single topic or theme but I'd recommend picking it up out of curiosity and knowing you'll likely be swept along reading.

An Oral History of Atlantis is a collection stories that are just North of weird and that are mildly absurd in an almost uncanny valley sort of way. They often tread the line of science fiction/magical realism, and the writing was sharp and at times quite funny, very much leaning into the often somewhat strange premises for the stories. My favourite stories were Watch Your Step and Slide to Unlock, stories about espionage and the number of passwords one person is required to keep track of respectively, but unfortunately as much as I enjoyed many of the stories on an individual level, most weren’t particularly memorable for me and the collection never felt like it gelled.

Ed Park’s An Oral History of Atlantis is a wild, clever mix of sixteen short stories that mess with form, voice, and reality in the best ways. One minute you’re in a pandemic-stricken New York chasing a mysterious writer, the next you’re decoding secret messages in diner menus or watching a man’s life unfold entirely through forgotten passwords. Park’s sense of humor is sharp, his ideas are delightfully weird, and his characters - whether it’s eighteen women named Tina on an archaeological dig or an irate author yelling at his translator - tend to stick with you.

I took my time with this one, reading a story here and there, and it was worth it. The jokes land, the melancholy sneaks up on you, and the experimental styles never feel like they’re just for show. This was my first Ed Park read, but definitely not my last - his mix of surreal setups, smart wordplay, and emotional punch is exactly my kind of thing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced reader's copy; all opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This deeply creative, often confounding, often zany collection of short stories shows off Park's range and flair for the bizarre and original.

The newest volume from Ed Park is an astounding collection of stories. All bangers, no filler. Some highlights for me were “Eat Pray Click”, “Slide to Unlock”, and “”Wild Menace”.
A blend of genres and styles this collection reminded me of the best of Lethem or Chabon. Great follow up to the immeasurable “Same Bed Different Dreams”.

3 stars.*

I love short stories so I jumped at the chance to read this one through NetGalley.

The stories are bizarre and some of them hit and some of them were so bonkers that I really couldn't follow the thread before they ended,

Well written and curiously creative. Not my favorite but worth the read.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I really enjoyed how the short stories were slightly interconnected with each other. I am not a huge fan of short story collections, but I felt like these stories really flowed, and the vastly different styles of each story made the overall experience even better!

This started out promising. I really enjoyed the story, “The Wife on Ambien.” However, as the collection continued I found myself less and less engaged with the stories and feeling like the characters were blending together. As I have said before, collections can be a mixed bag. A lot of people seem to love this book. I love absurd short stories, so I thought I would too, but I just didn’t. The writer is clearly smart and talented, but this one didn’t work for me. If you like absurd short stories, maybe give it a try through the library.

Funny and thoughtful. Incisive and reflective in ways few writers manage to capture. The Wife of Ambien was one of my favorites. A well-writte, well-rounded, well-thought-out collection of stories.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

An Oral History of Atlantis is a short story collection which deal with the mundanities of the human experience in unique and occasionally absurd ways.

This collection is Ed Park at his best, and his best is unique, fresh, sharp and concise. I loved Same Bed, Different Dreams primarily for its weirdness and whimsy, and in An Oral History of Atlantis, Park delivers the same meal this time as a selection of appetizers. Almost all of these stories ended before I was done with them, and certainly all left me hungry for more. Though the stories may look like a bundle of disparate parts, somehow Park makes them all dance the same dance, and in some ways connects them in their own almost-universe. I laughed, I had a couple minor existential crises, and I'll certainly be picking up anything else Ed Park writes for the foreseeable future.

Not my typical read, so it was nice trying a new genre. "The Wife on Ambien," was probably my favorite and the most memorable in my opinion. As with most collections of works, some will stand out and some just wont click with the reader. I found this to be the case, but it was overall enjoyable!

The Oral History of Atlantis is not my usual read. Some of the stories were interesting reads, but most I could not get behind as recommending to others. I did have one that I enjoyed, Slide to Unlock it hit how we come to our internet passwords right on the head. The writing was interesting and had a lot of dialogue that was greatly developed. However, this one just wasn't for me.

Thank you to Random House for the advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

I'm really not a short stories person, but this was laugh-out-loud funny. Park is such an imaginative writer who creates worlds that are intimate and immediately knowable.