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Subcortical

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Lee Conell's linguistically deft stories examine the permeability between the real and the imagined, the stories buried beneath the surface and the stories by which we live our lives.
 
In the title story of this collection, a young woman who wants to become a doctor is manipulated by an older man into playing a role in one of his medical studies. In "The Lock Factory," winner of the Chicago Tribune's 2016 Nelson Algren Literary Award, three women who assemble school combination locks are trapped inside an escalating generational conflict of their own making. A boy who has lost his mother in "The Rent-Controlled Ghost" searches for the spirit of the mistreated tenant who formerly inhabited his apartment. "A Magic Trick for the Recently Unemployed" serves as a three-step how-to guide for reclaiming a sense of self and purpose. In "What the Blob Said to Me," an elderly woman dwells on her long-ago experience working at a government production site for the atomic bomb. And a mother-daughter Groupon for an upscale afternoon tea goes seriously awry in "Mutant at the Pierre Hotel."
 
With humor and verve, Subcortical's dynamic stories delve into the mysteries of the human mind as these haunted characters struggle with economic disparity, educational divides, and the often-contested spaces in which they live.
 

1. The Lock Factory
2. A Suggestion
3. Unit Cell
4. What the Blob Said to Me
5. My Four Stomachs
6. The Rent-Controlled Ghost
7. Subcortical
8. A Guide to Sirens
9. Hart Island
10. Recuerdo
11. The Afterlife of Turtles
12. Guardian
13. Ghost Train
14. The Sextrology Woman
15. A Magic Trick for the Recently Unemployed
16. Mutant at the Pierre Hotel
Acknowledgments

""Conell invites us into our own world with new eyes that capture the extraordinary details of the everyday and experience the extraordinary as merely mundane... These stories ask the reader to look closely at our present moment, to uncover its wonders and marvels. These stories are a reflection rather than a solution. They'll do better than break your heart'they'll shake it up and set the pieces cascading like snow in a globe, settling eventually in a familiar but different arrangement.""

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