Robert Scotellaro - God In A Can Book
God in a Can is a collection of flash and micro fictions that looks at life through a surreal, and often humorous lens, at various societal behaviors, perceptions at a slant, and unusual scenarios. Paradoxically, the underpinnings, at the core, can be very real in the way the stories explore how we live, struggle to live, and hope to.
In Robert Scotellaro’s new collection, God in a Can, each brilliant flash/micro story is a “metaphor of the powder fine substance of the world” (Italo Calvino): A mime with a gun breaks into the home of a couple and plays charades with them; a waitress encounters hell at one of her booths and serves it “scrams and extra crispy browns with a bucket of vice on the side”; in the title piece, with one spray of “God in the Can,” a man can restore his old cat’s youth and even make his ex-wife desire him, at least for a moment. Cloud walkers, wolves juggling beer bottles, extravagant poets who are also kidnappers—God in a Can unveils not only the absurdity, comedy and sadness of our lives but also the joy. Scotellaro writes the hell out of hell and heaven too!
—Jeff Friedman, author of The Marksman and Floating Tales
God in a Can is a sharp, unpredictable story collection full of humor, absurdity, and colorful characters who remain doggedly hopeful for better times. Here gods and humans share center stage: Hell stops in at a roadside diner, a man grows a colossal flare of peacock feathers, sumo wrestlers offer a personalized heating service, couples outwit the schadenfreude police, cope with new body parts, and keep love alive in a world that has been tilted askew. With a poet’s eye, Scotellaro hones in on vivid details and those small, sudden moments of elation.
—Frankie McMillan, author of The Father of Octopus Wrestling and My Mother and the Hungarians