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The Limitations of Existing
Fancy Shop is a collection of imaginative and thought-provoking short stories. Did you write these stories over time or did you write these stories specifically for this collection?
The stories are written at different times and occasions. What unites them is the unusual view of reality. Their common theme is the desire to overcome the limitations of existing and creating a new world of dreams comes true.
Your characters are intriguing and well developed in so few pages. Who was your favorite character to create?
I tend to Waste who stands against his predestined destiny to save the one who should be himself.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Some of the themes in my book are: change as a path to salvation or destruction, the clash between being and mind, dream as a path to one’s own unknown worlds.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
It would be a weird story collection about new challenges such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, loss of identity and their collision with a human mind.
Author Links: Twitter | Play Books
The short stories presented here take place at different times (past, present, future) with different fantasy levels – from stories that are nearly real to phantasmagorias and new Gothic. The characters are also different: knights, anonymous people, dreamers, outsiders, crazy ones, technocrats, cockroaches, holders of secret knowledge.
What unites them is the urge (gradual or sudden) to leave the orderly system of their lives, attracted by the alluring hope that they can find or create another world of dreams come true, inexpressible truths and oases of redemption of past guilt.
On the way to their new identities, they move freely between reality and fantasy. They are in constant conflict with themselves, and the front line is the line dividing the two hemispheres of their brains. The stories are very short but each has a complex plot, provocative suggestions and a surprising end. Without in any way denying the traditional concepts of good-evil, simple-profound, they lead the reader into worlds in which paradox is a synonym of universal meaning.
Fancy Shop
Fancy Shop by Valeri Stanoevich is a collection of twenty thought-provoking short stories. This assorted collection of stories is set in various times and locations and contain all sorts of characters ranging from newspaper vendors to knights. However, they are united by the common theme of curiosity and change. There is nothing constant, and the characters, and readers, should take nothing for granted. The stories are set in their own curious little worlds, where there are no limits, no definition of reality or fantasy, where anything is possible.
For instance, the short story “Fancy Shop” starts with a seemingly simple scene with a girl and an old man in what appears to be a thrift store, but in less than three pages, the story comes to a satisfying end that leaves readers in childlike awe.
The short stories start with a seemingly simple setting, nothing out of the ordinary. It is not until the end that the reader truly understands the paranormal or fantastical element in the story. The themes are varied, the characters uncanny and unique, and the tone and the narration style constantly change across the different stories.
This book has a wonderful ability to transport the reader into a world seemingly pulled from a child’s imagination. Where you can fly away with the clouds and a curious looking building is a secret world.
Fancy Shop provides readers with a collection of extraordinary stories that will speak to those that “asks questions and seeks answers,” as the preface correctly suggests. Each story stands on its own and delivers something different, whether exciting or interesting, but always entertaining. This was fun to read and I look forward to more stories from author Valeri Stanoevich.
ASIN: B09C26PZVY
LITERARY TITAN 