In the hypnotic, psychological landscape of Kathe Koja, people pushed to extremes of endurance -- physical and emotional -- illuminate the netherworld of artistic exploration and insantiy, and the slippery slope into perversity -- sexual and violent. The stories in "Extremities" explore encounters with the unexplainable and the bizarre; old-fashioned obsession and vengeance with consequences twisted and unique; interecting paths of the living and the dead. Koja's language is gorgeously descriptive of each delicate sensation, prosaic and grotesque. Every sense is exquisitely evoked from the visual to the tactile, the auditory to the olfactory.Frequently Koja's people are betrayed by their own imaginations -- artists controlled by their muses, women dominated by their fantasy lovers, ordinary Joes bewitched by subversive inner voices and inexplicably endowed with unwanted powers.
