This anthology of short stories made me feel a visceral discomfort with each page. The descriptions of bodies alone made me feel squeamish. The story 'Near Flesh' brought to mind another series of short stories; "I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories" by Ray Bradbury is also named after the short story including a robotic companion (the robots do have very different uses).

My favorite story in this has to be "Rhonda Discovers Art". I love the way the stories read, following each character.

Overall, an interesting set of stories that kept me hooked. Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

These stories have teeth.
Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love slammed into me in my twenties. I read Attic and Truck shortly thereafter. Discovering Near Flesh stopped my mind for a moment. Something I hoped for many times over the years turned out to exist: Another book by Katherine Dunn.*

Dunn took me over all over again. She's unclassifiable. Her strength, fierceness, and raw tenderness shine. Her perceptions–cutting, uncanny, and at times humorous at the edge of pain–give me the kind of kinship I longed for from childhood onward.

In Near Flesh, I find a world achingly close to the one that formed me, with its mysteries, uncertain love, violence, and inexplicable events. It contains one of the most horrifying brief stories I’ve read. ‘Carrying My Baby on My Hip’ hit me in the chest so hard, I’ll remember it forever.

The first five stories tempted me to continue my heady dive into this rush of resonant images and heart-tugging characters non-stop. I slowed down to savor each one, drawn into palpable experiences of hard-scrabble life, the yearning for fulfillment, the complexities of motherhood, chilling extremes, and awareness verging on visionary.

Along with the crisp, sharp language, there's the seductive unspooling of memories and the rare communion with someone speaking things that had to stay in the shadows. Gifts of the mind as well as the wounds carried in the body.

This is a place I want to live for awhile, with all its wonders, pain, and bone-deep truths. There are things we survive that change us. When you get pain and surviving on the page and transmute it beyond personal experience–that’s an alchemy that lasts.

This might be as close as I can get to why Katherine Dunn matters so much.

*I haven't yet encountered Frog. It was published many years after her other novels. It's her only other book–aside from one on boxing. I am deeply grateful to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux  MCD for the review copy for consideration and for bringing Dunn to the attention of more readers. These opinions are solely my own. I'll add the TikTok link.

Dunn’s writing is so unsettling, it stays with you long after you’re done reading. I was very floored by how the stories each contained important introspective lessons. I think the title short story of Near Flesh is unforgettable. This is one of the best short story collections I’ve read.

I took a class in college for my Comparative Literature minor — all about the uncanny: doppelgängers, liminal spaces, the like. You name it we consumed translated movies and texts about it.

Book so perfectly encapsulate that feeling— every day scenarios twisted (in my opinion) for the sneaky inklings that remain inside your head. Except they are laid out on paper, and artfully so.

I am amazed by Catherine Dunn‘s work with this absolute work of art. It’s hard to avoid stalking them while, and I had to force myself to digest as I went.

I’m not done with the book yet; I suspect it is one of those I will return to again and again. Whenever I’m ready for a new tale. Regardless, I already know how I’ll feel at the end. This is one of those collections for which you can tell after the first few pages.

Thank you #NetGalley for this ARC.

Near Flesh is a collection of short stories that dive into the human experience and condition. Each story is thought provoking and speaks of its own unique tale. The writing is moving, enveloping, and engaging.
Some of the stories were a bit emotionally heavier than others. A few of them will be burned into my mind for a while. This collection does a great job of showing the nasty, burdensome, and hard parts of being human.
This book would be great for fans of How High We Go In The Dark and Black Mirror.

I enjoy when works of short fiction are powerful and poignant, and Katherine nailed it with this. I found that it didn't rise above my normal hesitation about short story collections (loving a handful, not connecting with most in the collection), but overall the quality and the writing was high in these stories.

NEAR FLESH is a super smart and compelling short story collection. These 19 stories are about yearning and desire; each one is unique and distinct. The characters are fully fleshed out and complex, which I especially appreciated. The author makes terrific use of crisp imagery and demonstrates impressive versatility.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance e-galley; all opinions in my review are 100% my own.

This is a collection of short stories, centered around people who do ordinary people stuff. I guess, or in some cases maybe it veers into a sci fi-type story.

I thought the writing masterful. It’s not easy to write short, succinct stories that leave an impression, but Dunn manages to do so. What is really remarkable is her ability to make something interesting out of the mundane. The stories digs into the psyche of people — people who are mostly the way that people are. They are flawed and kind of uninteresting, but with rich internal lives, fears and coping mechanisms. These are not stories of hope, but of living.

It’s quite a unique way of writing, of looking into people’s deepest corners. I enjoyed it very much.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for letting me read this ARC.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this collection of short stories but it sure wasn’t the feeling of unease and tension that seeps through every single piece. The world Dunn has created in these stories is a bleak and ugly world with just a sliver of beauty slicing through every now and then like the faintest glimmer of hope. Impeccably written and beautifully crafted, each story is its own universe. My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy in return for my unbiased review.

As someone who LOVED Geek Love, I couldn't wait to read more from this author. I loved that the book was divided into multiple short stories and each and every one of them was great and had something to offer the reader. The authors writing style is so unique and absolutely every one of these short stories will stick with you. Each story carries something different but dark and dreary and I think that is what hooked me from the beginning.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for this ARC!

I would read anything Katherine Dunn writes, Geek Life was incredible. I went into this novel with high hopes and of course the authors meets them all. All the short stories are engrossing and fascinating. My favorite would have to be near flesh I finished it and instantly reread it. I can’t wait to get a physical copy to add to my bookcase.

Katherine Dunn is a force to be reckoned with, and NEAR FLESH is no exception. I devoured these stories!!!

Thanks to the publisher for the egalley!

I <3 short stories. I genuinely enjoyed this collection and loved the writing style. This was my first Katherine Dunn read, so I will definitely be checking out geek love. I also enjoyed how every story is very different and takes you to a completely different place. Though some stories stuck out far more than others to me, I still very much enjoyed reading this! Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the earc.

4.5 stars! I am a huge fan of Geek Love and was so excited to see Katherine Dunn on the list of upcoming books in NetGalley. Some of the stories dragged a bit but her writing was enthralling and I was so deeply absorbed! If you like Mariana Enriquez type stories, you enjoy a well written story and getting deeply involved, I recommend it. I loved the dark vibe some of the stories carried and in general how different it all was. Thanks to Katherine Dunn for sharing these stories. I really got lost in them!!! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC and Farrah, Straus and Giroux for bringing out another book by one of my favorite cult authors!

I wanted to like this collection soooo bad. Dunn, the legend behind Geek Love, left behind this trove of short fiction, a mix of unreleased and previously unpublished stories that explore desire, violence, and survival -- mostly through the lens of women struggling to maintain control over their lives. It should have been mesmerizing. But mostly, I was frustrated.

Now maybe this is a me problem, but I spent most of this book searching for a throughline connecting these 19 stories that never quite materialized (I sincerely hope that someone smarter than me writes a review explaining what connects these stories so I can understand the error of my ways). As a whole, the collection felt scattered-- occasionally intriguing in isolation, but ultimately failing to cohere. A few pieces stood out-- "Fanno Creek" and "The Flautist" had an odd magnetism that I really can't explain-- but the rest blurred together in a way that felt more like a slog than a revelation. e stories felt a little scattered. Sometimes intriguing in isolation, but failing to cohere as a whole. I kept waiting for a moment where everything would snap into focus, where the collection as a whole would make sense, but it never did.

That said, Dunn's talent is unmistakable. "The Resident Poet" made my skin crawl (in the best way), while "Near Flesh", the collection's namesake, is an absolute masterclass-- one of the bleakest, most devastating explorations of intimacy and the limits of automated companionship I've ever read. Dunn knows how to unsettle, how to make the grotesque meaningful, but taken as a whole, Near Flesh never came together for me as a fully realized work.

This makes me sad. I wish I felt differently. I wanted to be swept up in what I think could have been Dunn's singular, feral vision, but this collection just didn't land.

Geek Love is one of my favorite books by this author and this one is also very good. There are nineteen stories, some are only a few pages long but you would not think that, the story is conveyed very well in a short period. Most touch on female, desire, motherhood and violence. I enjoyed all of them, and I can't really name one that stood out more than the others, the story of the woman who purchases various sex robots to pleasure her, was interesting, a warning I suppose of letting your desires get ahead of your smarts. I would certainly recommend this and Geek Love (if you haven't read it). Thanks to #Netgalley and #MCD for the ARC.

While I appreciate the creativity that was required for this book, I don’t think it’s for me. The short stories felt confusing, and I didn’t really understand the point or the message. I can see why some readers would like it, I just don’t think it’s my style.

I just wasn’t feeling this. I appreciated how short some of these stories were, but I found each time I moved on to the next, I’d forgotten what the previous was about. So I figure this book and I are just not compatible.

My first time reading Katherine Dunn even though I've had Geek Love on my shelf for years.

The first thing I admire about this book is its inclusion of truly short fiction: stories that are only a few pages long but present a clear vision or scene, conveyed through crisp imagery and description, and that leave you with a distinct impression before moving on and changing gears. "Fanno Creek" and "The Flautist" were like this, and I really enjoyed them both. There are several longer stories, too, that are urgent and compelling from the get-go; my favorites are "In Transit," "Rhonda Discovers Art," and the title story "Near Flesh."

These five stories are the biggest takeaways from the collection for me. The stories gain traction and momentum as readers progress through them; they really start to take off toward the middle, and I appreciate this thoughtful attention to curating the reading experience.

Dunn navigates many different styles and subjects through these stories and I appreciate the range of ideas exhibited here. Not every story worked for me and that's OK because the ones that did will stick with me. I think this collection stands as a great introduction to Katherine Dunn, and it's inspired me to finally read Geek Love.