Within the recent explosion of creative nonfiction, a new type of
form is quietly emerging, what Brenda Miller calls "hermit crab
essays." The Shell Game is an anthology of these intriguing essays
that borrow their structures from ordinary, everyday sources:
a recipe, a crossword puzzle, a Craig's List ad. Like their
zoological namesake, these essays do not simply wear their
borrowed "shells" but inhabit them so perfectly that the borrowed
structures are wholly integral rather than contrived, both shaping
the work and illuminating and exemplifying its subject.The Shell
Game contains a carefully chosen selection of beautifully
written, thought-provoking hybrid essays tackling a broad range of
subjects, including the secrets of the human genome, the
intractable pain of growing up black in America, and the gorgeous
glow residing at the edges of the autism spectrum. Surprising,
delightful, and lyric, these essays are destined to become classics
of this new and increasingly popular hybrid form.