Introduces a writer of extraordinary skill and vision.
- Joyce Carol Oates

What Eugene Garber’s Metaphysical Tales remind us of is that we are all seekers.

The heroes of Garber’s stories sometimes look a lot like us, sometimes appear exotic. But under the skin they are us, even if that us is a buried us.

Think of reading these stories as a process of unearthing our deepest desires. What do our heroes seek? Often familiar goals–admiration, love, divine favor. But whatever it is, the first lesson they have to learn is that it’s not to be found on the surface of things. It’s not to be easily won.

So it’s not surprising that these seekers often resort to stratagems that will seem to the reader (but only for a while) bizarre. One seeker must peel away the skins of buried memories layer by layer until he reaches the archetypal woman of his inner life. An artist must paint a portrait of a lethal pair of lovers to save her soul. Another will look for truth in the adoration of a deformed child. Another will find his life’s purpose at the end of the trajectory of a bullet, another in the mouths of cannibals.

And there is inevitably Eros, whether the longing hero looks in the mirror of same gender or different gender, whether in tenderness or violence.