Wolf Parts: A Mini Review

It's important to be upfront here, I've been a fan of Matt Bell's work for years. His micro-fiction site (co-authored with Josh Maday), Dancing on Fly Ash, was an almost daily stop for me before it turned book and went away (2005 or so). And over the convening years -- awards, anthology selections, and so on -- his writing has only gotten better.

So it wasn't a great surprise when after three pages, I found myself falling for Bell's latest effort, a mini-book titled Wolf Parts, which at its core retells, twists and makes the fable of "Little Red Riding Hood" into something new and different, surreal and fantastic over the course of 45 pages.

Told in a number of very brief fictions, the reader is introduced to Red, the Wolf, the Grandmother, the Woodsman and all the usual players, but Bell takes these familiar constructs and adds a dash of the visceral, the macabre, the erotic, and a simple elegance that would make the Brothers Grimm proud not just for following the tradition of their cautionary tales (of which many readers are only familiar with the watered down, Disneyfied versions), but for taking a step beyond what they might have ever envisioned and creating something special that stands all on its own.

Wolf Parts can be purchased directly at Keyhole Press.