The queen took a swan for her pet. The bird was white and large, with a body so puffed out and fluffy it looked just like a small cloud, only with legs, with a beak, and with bright beaded black eyes.
‘Throw him up in the air,’ said the queen, ‘and who knows who we’d fool.’
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The Third Elevator is the story of a swan, a bluebird, the curious family they form together, and the mysterious elevators in the center of their village — one that rises into the sky, one that opens into a forest, and one that descends underground. Other characters include a miner in search of something beyond the walls of his cave, a logger too gentle to chop trees, a team of kleptomaniacal dove nurses, a king with an appetite for turtles, and his queen, the swan’s first owner.
Aimee Bender is the author of the story collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, a New York Times Notable Book, and Willful Creatures, nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own, an L.A. Times pick of the year. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Harper’s, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and many more publications, and have been heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She is the recipient of two Pushcart prizes and in 2005 was nominated for the TipTree award.
‘Aimee Bender’s images explode, her words ignite. Watching her imagination catch fire remains a sustaining joy in my readerly life.’
— Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones
‘Aimee Bender’s stories come as a revelation.’
— Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn
‘Bender uses language the way painters move paint, working squarely in the tradition of Gertrude Stein.’
— Alan Cheuse, NPR
‘To curl up with an Aimee Bender story is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place.”
— Jessica Shaw, Entertainment Weekly