A sentiment from "A. Wonderland," a modern retelling of the obvious, captures the spirit of Wells’s debut collection: "She knows he’s too old for Alice but feels sex with a much older man is a small price to pay for a good nonsense poem." But Wells’s rejection of straightforward plot in favor of nonsense is ultimately hit and miss: the random feel of "Blue Skin" simulates the disconnectedness felt by brother and sister as they struggle to grow up motherless in a helter-skelter world; a man whose sole job is changing lightbulbs ("Godlight") is intended to shed light, as it were, on life in an apocryphal hotel; "Sherman and the Swan" is a meandering tale of a boy born to the world as a marrow donor (too late) who comes to think the sister he failed may be reincarnated as the cygnet in his care; the most experimental piece is "Secession, XX," with a side-by-side newspaper-column structure meant to simulate the physiology of Siamese twins (left side of page, girl; right side, boy) whose point of view is shared, to say the least. The experiment is conducted mainly to explore plain old pedestrian feelings, which is what any experimental fiction should ultimately be about. Unfortunately, Wells doesn’t always deliver on this mark. Too often, she relies on puns, double-entendres, and the general raucousness of modern product placement, which, even though it’s her subject, dates her and gives her work the cultural penetration of bell-bottom jeans. And even as one admires the ideas, one wishes they weren’t quite so cute—the reader longs for inspiration from the mind rather than the headlines.

The choppiness here may be recognizable, but that doesn’t mean it’s good story. A vision still on its way.

"Distinguished by a compressive force born from invention and intensity rather than economy, Wells's aptly titled Compression Scars is a memorable debut. The writing is consistently fresh and often beautiful, though for Wells beauty is a by-product. The primary function of her language is incantation—necessary to effect the alchemical transformations that inform each story."--Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago

"Slyly comic yet deeply felt, Wells's marvelous fiction embraces the sacred weirdness of the everyday life. These are magical stories, in every sense of the word, by a writer with a conjurer's feel for the hidden compartments, death-defying escapes, and lighter-than-air levitations of language."--Peter Ho Davies, author of Equal Love

"With a brilliant and imaginative cast of eccentric characters, Wells invites us into a world where 'things can get strange fast.'"--Colorado Review

"Even in a crowded field, it is a rare pleasure to come across a prose stylist like Kellie Wells, whose intellect and language bid one another beautifully to a dance. Here is a thrilling debut from a writer so agile and subtle in her terms that, like Walter Abish and Kathryn Davis, she dares to be at play in the most unsettling questions of her day. Surely when the present generation of writers shakes down to its unique and irreplaceable voices, Kellie Wells will be one of them.--Jaimy Gordon, author of She Drove Without Stopping

"[A] debut collection of luminous short stories that reflect both the fragility and flexibility of the human spirit . . . Sometimes dark, frequently droll, by turns heartbreaking and humorous, Wells' phantasmal stories shimmer with a dreamlike vibrancy that continues to haunt long after the last word has been read.”--Booklist

"The people in these stories are vulnerable, eccentric outsiders attempting to find their way in a world that puzzles and dazzles them. Wells adeptly portrays both their vulnerability and their fortitude. Her strong, unaffected prose contrasts sharply with the surreal quality of many of the stories. This collection introduces a writer of startling imagination and great promise."--Library Journal

"Beautiful pain-streaked stories."--Third Coast