Author Reading: Ryan Boudinot “The Octopus Rises”

Novelist and erstwhile Orca Books bookseller Ryan Boudinot returns to Olympia to read from his new story collection, “The Octopus Rises.”

Bouncing between experimental fiction, absurdist farce, paranoid futurism, and stinging satire, Boudinot’s funny, inventive prose lays bare the hopes and anxieties of our age. From a heartbreaking and pitch-perfect account of the end of Bert and Ernie’s relationship to a story about lovelorn robots looking for a chop-shop owner who’s willing to look the other way in a world where robot sex is illegal, Boudinot’s prose crackles with acerbic wit. Some other stories in the book: a Miyazaki-esque story about an entire town that shares the same heart; “Chopsticks”, in which the protaganist’s cat who develops a hard drug problem; “An Essay and a Story about Mötley Crüe ” (wish-fulfillment disguised as memoir); “I Used to Be a Plastic Bottle” ; and “The Guy Who Kept Meeting Himself”.

Boudinot last visited the store with his sensational science fiction novel, “Blueprints of the Afterlife”.