{"id":7771,"date":"2026-11-04T13:36:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T13:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7771"},"modified":"2026-11-04T13:36:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T13:36:00","slug":"the-museum-of-lost-things-stories-by-dennis-pahl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7771","title":{"rendered":"The Museum of Lost Things: Stories by Dennis Pahl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kafkaesque and self-referential, this sophisticated collection of short fiction hits home hard.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In The<\/em> Museum Of Lost Things,<\/em> Dennis Pahl shows interest in both straight realism and the unconventional, surprising, and fantastic. An academic who has previously published on nineteenth-century American literature, Pahl brings heaps of knowledge to bear in shaping his own fictional situations.<\/p>\n

The collection opens with a set of stories that have strongly surrealist premises. In one, a man finds someone living inside his suitcase when he and his wife go on vacation. In another, a man is pursuing revenge on a waiter who he undeservingly tipped. In another, a man becomes literally unrecognizable when he shaves his mustache. In the story which lends its name to the book, a kind of small parallel dimension plays host to long lost objects and more things besides. In contrast to their quirky premises, these stories often turn out to be quite dark. They feel heavily influenced by Franz Kafka in his Metamorphosis<\/em> mode, a sense which is proven correct later on when we see Kafka himself placed in the center of a story.<\/p>\n

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A thread of existential concern, if not anguish or dread, runs through the book. It is reminiscent, in juxtaposition with Kafka, of the Russian realists, and just as ponderous. A majority of the stories even feature Russian names, which can hardly be a coincidence. This Dostoevskian existentialism works hand in hand with a meta existentialism, like continually questioning the authorial voice through the authorial process itself. The writer, sometimes writing a story within the story, on more than one instance expresses doubt about the reason why he is writing. Pahl\u2019s narrators are not unreliable as much as they are simply unsure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there was no one around I used to invent people. Now I invent them even when they are around, even when they are standing or sitting right before me.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The short story is not usually an ideal form for the study of character, like the novel is, but Pahl manages just fine in this department, even in his shorter stories which are no more than three pages long. Even in his more absurd premises, there are few moments in which character actions feel unnatural, and, at the book\u2019s best, the people feel comic as well as tragic. See, for example, the man\u2014it is always a man\u2014who is saddened, out of loneliness, that he cannot attract even the interest of the police.<\/p>\n

If, or better when, we find ourselves lost in life, reaching for meaning and finding none, literature, however great, can hardly be of help. But some of it, when it expresses the same concerns, can make us feel connected and less alone. As one such work, The<\/em> Museum Of Lost Things<\/em> brings together seriousness with lightness and makes the case that confusion is not to be shunned and ashamed of but embraced. Aficionados of surrealist fiction will have a lot to enjoy in The Museum of Lost Things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The post The Museum of Lost Things: Stories by Dennis Pahl<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kafkaesque and self-referential, this sophisticated collection of short fiction hits home hard. In The Museum Of Lost Things, Dennis Pahl shows interest in both straight realism and the unconventional, surprising, and fantastic. An academic who has previously published on nineteenth-century American literature, Pahl brings heaps of knowledge to bear in shaping his own fictional situations. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}