Brian Howell's latest collection of short stories, The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories (Salt, 2022), is wonderfully weird. What can be done in a short story, which is much harder to sustain over the length of an entire novel, is to explore feelings and situations that are off-kilter, at odds with the norm. These are narratives that push the boundaries of acceptance and conjure feelings of uneasiness, sometimes even repulsion, but that also challenge views on how people choose, or are forced, to live. Bearing in mind these elements, I feel The Man Who Loved Kuras and Other Stories, although not for everyone, is not only wonderfully weird, but also weirdly wonderful.