Kit Reed has published 22 novels and over a hundred short stories, has garnered awards, and remains as critically feted as she is commercially underrated. A reason for this is that she one of those authors whose work loiters at the mainstream edge of SF. She calls herself “transgenred” acknowledging the problem that her fiction is too fantastical for most literati and too literary for most fans of the fantastic.
Her new collection, What Wolves Know, available in a limited edition from a small press, is unlikely to raise her profile dramatically. It is, however, confirmation of an extraordinary talent. Here are tales of mothers who are monstrous in their maternalness, families on the brink of implosion, children mutated by parental pressure in every dream home a dystopia.
Of particular note are the title story, about a boy raised by wolves who struggles to adapt to the modern world; The Blight Family Singers”, a bizarre satire on the Von Trapps; and the seething “Special,” with its splendidly mordant and unforeseeable punchline. –James Lovegrove The Financial Times
“Reed has a prose style that’s pure dry ice, displayed in dystopian stories that specialize in bitterness and dislocation.” –The New York Times Book Review
“Kit Reed calls herself ‘transgenred…’ Her new collection, What Wolves Know… is confirmation of an extraordinary talent.” —The Financial Times