Twenty Favorite Strange Literary Romances
(in alphabetical order by author)
The Fermata by Nicholson Baker (a man and many people frozen in space and time)
Crash by J. G. Ballard (multiple car crash victims, both male and female)
Snow White by Donald Barthelme (a woman and seven dwarfs)
The Regrets by Amy Bonnaffons (a woman and a ghost)
Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler (a woman and a tentacled alien)
The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino (a woman and an empty suit of armor)
The Marriage of Sticks by Jonathan Carroll (several men and a “possibility vampire”)
His Monkey Wife by John Collier (a man and a chimpanzee)
Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn (a girl and a dinosaur)
Bear by Marian Engel (a woman and a wild brown bear)
Night Animals by Brecht Evens (a girl and a strange crowd of menstrual creatures)
Chester 5000 XYV by Jess Fink (a woman and a Victorian robot)
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (a man and many additional iterations of himself)
Vaporetto 13 by Robert Girardi (a man and a ghost)
With by Donald Harington (a girl and an adolescent spirit)
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls (a woman and a sea monster named Larry)
As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem (a woman and a void in reality)
God’s Wife by Amanda Michalopoulou (a woman and the Deity)
The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin (a female werewolf and a male werewolf)
Grow a Pair: 9½ Fairytales About Sex by Joanna Walsh (men and women and many animated genitals, among them a detached penis , a penis-bush, and a flock of flying vaginas)
— January 12, 2021