I know it's a huge, sarcastic cliche, but "It really makes you think" is sometimes a completely sincere description of something and in this case, An Oral History of Atlantis really makes you think! It's very funny and surreal and I didn't always understand what a particular story was "about," but everything really stuck with me and afterwards I found myself wishing I could read more.

Ed Park-An Oral History of Atlantis-stories- Publishing July 29th, 2025 by Random House.

A short story collection that looks at the trivial, mundane parts of life in a very witty, quirky, beautiful way.
This is my first book by Park. His writing reminds me of Marie-Helene Bertino’s writing.

For fans of odd short stories.
Favorites: A Note to My Translate, The Wife on Ambien, Slide to Unlock.
(Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC).

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the ARC of this collection of short stories.

After reading this collection, my opinion is that Park is a very good writer, but I have no idea what point he is trying to make with these stories. I think it’s possible that the satire is so elevated that I just didn’t get it. The style and some of the more humorous stories brought Vonnegut to mind, whom I do love. These little vignettes while entertaining to read, didn’t reveal much about humanity to me, but once again, maybe I just didn’t get it. I did like that they were short, and entertaining.

“My girlfriend, Tabby, reviews science fiction for a living, which just goes to show you that America is still the greatest, most useless country in the world.”

If I had to describe my experience reading this short story collection, I would say I felt like the kid in the David After Dentist YouTube video when, coming out of anesthesia, he asked his dad, “Is this real life?” On the other hand, for those who want to tackle Park’s 544-page Pulitzer Prize Fiction finalist book Same Bed Different Dreams, these stories are perfect little amuse-bouches that will develop the palate for the task. In other words, if it needs to be said, Parks is an acquired taste. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s like learning a second language. Getting into the rhythm comes with practice but is worth it.

These stories are weird, quirky and funny satirical glances at life. I chuckled for the first half of the book. The next day, I had trouble finding interest. Maybe that’s down to the southern expression that too much pie is too much pie.

Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group—Random House and NetGalley for this e-ARC.

Very enjoyable collection of short stories! As with any short story collection, these do tend to be a bit hit or miss, but overall I liked the writing and the mundane but surreal atmosphere in this collection. My favorites were An Accurate Account, Weird Menace, Slide to Unlock, and The Wife on Ambien.

“…𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘺𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘨𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦, ‘𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘪𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴,’ 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘩é, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩.'"

After DNF-ing Same Bed Different Dreams and trudging through this collection, I’ve realized that Park is not a novelist nor even a storyteller but a really really good notetaker. Many lines sing, but they don’t fully form a song.

Park is a great writer. Sentences are full of sharp wit and class, localized in that post-MFA New York voice that had time to perfect itself under the helms of The New Yorker and mimicking Dorothy Parker. But that’s all it is. All for show. Plain notes.

Most of these stories just end. Don’t go anywhere. Mostly forgettable. And though they’re a fun time, they’re just as fleeting as the times, and just as fleeting as any good summer with funny lines and lovely people.
All is forgotten, and then we move on.
Mere observations that don’t amount to much.

As a professional literary translator myself, I found "A Note to My Translator" absolutely uproarious. This is the best story collection I've read since "Borrowed Hearts" by Rick DeMarinis.

My girlfriend, Tabby, reviews science fiction for a living, which just goes to show that America is still the greatest, most useless country in the world. from An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park

These quirky stories were uneven for me, some engaging me more than others. But they always take risks with their quirky characters (with names like Toner Low, Deletia, Bethany Blanket, Hans de Krap, and Mercy Pang) and unique story lines, and are filled with quotable epitaphs.

“His thoughts were shrouded in rumor, perfumed with adventure and abstruse interlinear controversy.”

“Our school had a modest student body but approximately five million committees and organizations, for everything from philately to step aerobics, the assault-awareness group Take Back the Night to Take Back the Knight, a chess mentoring program.”

I loved the riff on the many ways a character comes up with passwords, including “your hometown backward plus the year you were born. Olaffub72.” Your passwords together would be “an abbreviated memoir, your life flashing before your eyes.”

One story is the “commentary track to the collector’s edition” of a movie based on a story in a 1985 pulp magazine, Weird Menace. My son would love it.

Another story is about a character who wrote a book entitled”A Tree Grows in Baghdad” and is on a book tour. A man invents a Kindle that can change the book to keep your interest; you will never read the same story twice. A man’s “secret blog” averages three readers a week.

The witty humor diverts while deeper insights arise.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

AN ORAL HISTORY OF ATLANTIS | ty @atrandombooks this comes out 7/29

Park's story collection has a lot of range - in genre, humor, depth and mode. In "Weird Menace," a director and starring actor talk about an old movie from the '80s that neither seems to really remember all that much about. "Slide to Unlock" which I really loved, felt like an ode to an old internet blog about a man trying to remember his password through a variety of different aspects about his life.

What was surprising but maybe shouldn't have been was how funny some of the stories were. Bring on the Dancing Horses made me chuckle, so did The Wife on Ambien.

There are also some startling moments when you realize that there are some interlocked elements and characters that are embedded from one story to another.

Seven Women was such an interesting short character study on these interlocked women.

My favorites were Two Laptops, Weird Menace and Watch Your Step

An absurdist (?), modernist (?) collection of odd short stories illustrating different aspects of the randomness and absurdity of everyday modern life, the power and responsibility of art, and more. If you’re a fan of exploring the question “What’s the point of it all?” through ambiguous ways, you’ll enjoy this collection.

Park explores the question of art and representation via different angles. In “A Note to My Translator,” a (fake) author is critical of his (fake) translator’s rendering of his book, in which new characters that are not in the original seem to have been written in, among other changes. In “Machine City,” the line between reality and filmmaking art is blurred as a college student is drawn into his one and only film role randomly opposite his ex-girlfriend.

Unfortunately, it turns out that this isn’t the kind of short story I enjoy. The stories can be quite strange and pointless, reminiscent of the artsy indie films that defined a certain 80s and 90s experience. (Indeed, many of the stories in this collection are set in that era.) This grunge/alt, “we’re so cool we’re too cool for this life” perspective may be kind of alienating for some readers, like it was for me.

An Oral History of Atlantis is the first book I have read by Ed Park but it won't be the last. I can't wait to read more of this excellent author.

The book is a collection of short stories which I found very funny, with flashes of brilliance and some phrases that stood out because they were so perfectly expressive of the human experience and/or the experiences of the characters.

The stories are consistently good (not always the case in collections) and very funny, sometimes sardonic (as in the case of a spy who is weighing the skills of another spy who is just beginning and failing--Park displays the double vision of what the narrator says to the newbie and what they are actually thinking--and planning to do.

Another story stood out because of the technical skills, the craft of it. A formerly famous (or perhaps semi-famous) celebrity/actress is being interviewed by a somewhat dubiously skilled screenwriter, reminiscing on what sounds like an awful film they made together. The narrative bounces between two columns and struck me as having a kind of resonance between the two voices, a rhythm, almost a musicality alongside down to earth--even. inarticulate--voices trying to communicate--and mostly missing the mark.

I also loved a story in which a man's relationship with his wife is described through the language of passwords and their permutations.

And alongside the humor, there is substance. The humor is bolstered by some serious reflection of who we are as we try to make sense of the world and our lives.

I hope everyone will discover for themselves the delightful talent of Park and enjoy
Many of the stories are written in the first person.



I am grateful to Random House Publishers, NetGalley, and the author for an advance copy of this e-book.

An Oral History of Atlantis will be published on July 29, 2025 by Random House

The biggest takeaway from this short story collection is that Ed Park is an immensely talented writer; the prose variation in this collection was so engaging, interesting, and well-done. As a lover of good writing, I thoroughly enjoyed these stories.

I didn't discern any one theme connecting each story, and some I enjoyed more than others (my favorite was "Slide to Unlock"), but rather, I felt like this collection was a commentary on life, generally. How fleeting it can be, the memories we hold, the people we meet, and how that all leaves an impact on us.

Also, I just absolutely love this cover!

I was looking forward to this short story collection, especially after seeing it blurbed by Kaveh Akbar, who wrote one of my favorite books of last year. I enjoy dabbling in absurdism, which this promised.

While it largely delivered, it’s writing in its best moments reminding me of a more nihilistic Vonnegut - high praise! - I couldn’t get past the issues I had with it.

Some of the stories were engaging: a letter from a long-lost uncle-father, a lesbian spy narrating her time as the handler of an absolutely awful nepo baby fellow spy, a funereal reflection on a college professor and his course on aphorisms held in a weird underground filled with vending machines.

At first, I enjoyed the moments where Park was self-referential, harkening back to characters or elements from his previous stories like Easter eggs. But the more this went on, the more it felt like he was trying to demonstrate how clever he was while, at times, phoning in the remaining short stories.

Sometimes it felt like the stories didn’t have a point, but in those instances, it also felt like they lacked a point of view, which I personally find critical in writing that relies in vibes over plot.

The author’s inclusion of super outdated language is what finally did me in. Despite the fact that this man is a literal professor of writing at Princeton, he still chose to use the words “transgendered” in the short story Thought and Memory after correctly using both the words trans and transgender. Make it make sense. This happens in the context of a cis author only being able to book a reading at a trans open mic night and deepening his voice to try to pass as trans rather than walk away from a space he didn’t belong in 🤨

I almost DNF’d at this point and kind of wish I had because it soured the rest of the book for me. Then, in the final short story, the author used the outdated term “midget” multiple times. This term is considered a slur by little people, which Park is not.

Thank you to Random House and Ed Park for the e-ARC and opportunity to read An Oral History of Atlantis.

An entertaining collection of sixteen short stories that range in subjects from embellished translations, family dramas and miscommunication, love, , music, schlocky yet cult classic science fiction (the DVD commentary with the director and lead actress while both are quite pickled is hilarious, a remote island with a research group of eighteen women all named Tina, and other subjects. Even more in credible is Ed Park's ability to interweave characters into the seemingly unrelated stories. I lost tract of how many times I laughed while reading this collection.

On a side note--as a "Tina" I find the concept of 18 Tinas on a remote island both intriguing and disturbing. LOL! As far as aphorisms go, my favorite in the time we find ourselves : "All that glitters is NOT gold".

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for the eARC.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. I really liked this book, I thought it was really funny. I would like to read more of Ed Park's books.

I thought I had read Ed Park before, but had not. These stories were not at all what I was expecting, but mostly that worked for me. I enjoyed the hilarity of certain passages, I thought the stories were taut and extremely well-written. But as a collection I'm not sure I found it particularly cohesive. I think I would really enjoy Park's long-form novel (I mean, clearly the Pulitzer prize committee thought well of his work in making him a finalist), but this set of stories varied in interest for me. Sometimes going in without expectations makes for a fantastic reading experience, but in this case I kept finishing each story wanting a little more, or a little less. Four stars for inventive prose, clever thoughts, and a few stories that truly shine. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy, in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I really enjoyed the surprising stories in this collection that have a nostalgia for pre- and early internet communication. My favorite story is Bring On the Dancing Horses, where the narrator talks about his parents, his girlfriend Tabby, and his crush, a younger woman named Deletia. Stories like this are casual and funny, exploring online life and miscommunications. They are sometimes antic, always charming, and thoroughly of their time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A brainy, bizarre, and brilliant ride through the sideways corners of reality. 📚🌀

I had such a great time reading this Arc of An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park. This collection of 16 short stories is sharp, funny, and totally original. Some stories are just a few pages long, while others stretch out a bit more, but all of them are playful and surprising in the best way. This author easily mixes styles like correspondence, commentary, and confessional and somehow it all works. It’s like a box of literary chocolates where every piece is different, but equally satisfying.

My favorite stories were Machine City and The Air as Air. One made me laugh out loud, the other hit me with a quiet emotional weight that I didn’t expect. There’s a strange magic in these stories: a Kindle that reads you as much as you read it, a fortune cookie with suspiciously good timing, recurring characters and places that pop up in new ways. I loved books that rewards you for paying attention. Sometimes I had to reread parts just to really absorb what was going on, but I didn’t mind at all. The weirdness was a part of the fun.

I wasn’t familiar with Ed Park’s work before this, but now I’d like to try more of his novels. His writing is smart without being showy, and i like his ability of making the absurd feel relatable 😆. These stories hit on themes of connection, memory, and identity. If you like short stories that makes you laugh, think, and maybe reread a few lines out loud 🤓, this one’s for you.

*I read this arc via NetGalley & @randomhouse . It publishes July 29. I will definitely be buying a copy for my shelves - this cover is fantastic. 💙🩵🧡 🩷

*Rated 3.25 on sites that allow quarter stars. For me, 3 stars means “I liked it.”*

As with all short story collections, some of these stories really hit and some of them were just alright. Of course, I had some favorites: The Wife on Ambien, Machine City, An Accurate Account, and Eat, Pray, Click.

The first three of my favorites were quite funny, and I loved that Machine City took place in New Haven, Connecticut, and even mentioned East Rock, the neighborhood I lived in for several years and mostly remember fondly. Eat, Pray, Click, a story about a man whose friend had a dream of revolutionizing the way ebooks are read, was interesting and strange and made me wonder if I’d enjoy reading an ebook that way (the answer is probably no).

While I enjoyed the collection overall, I couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t smart enough for it, like something about most of the stories was going over my head, flying juuust out of reach. Like I could almost grasp it but was slightly missing the point Ed Park was trying to make. Unless he wasn’t trying to make a point? But he probably was. Right? Yeah, probably.

Inventive, satirical, and ambitious. Park’s novel plays with form and myth in ways that challenge and reward. It’s not always easy to follow, but the originality is undeniable. For readers who enjoy metafiction and layered storytelling