The In-Betweens

No one would use the world "realism" to describe Matthew Simmons's stories—God, for one thing, makes a number of appearances, starting a band in one story and making a deal with a guy who calls him "Dude" in another. And much of the pleasure in the stories comes from the way he uses a bizarre conjecture—what would happen if a man built a mountain in his backyard, or if California fell into the sea?—to pry open our sense of the world. But the rest of the fun and interest comes from his wry, level-headed understanding that if such things did happen, we'd still behave like the people—petty, bumbling, capable of both affection and cruelty—we've always been.