“Even though I knew this was all for the best, still, I was so fucking sad.” 

   -from “Big Velcro”

     Launching off of an already prolific career as both a novelist and short story writer, Brock Clarke’s latest collection Special Election (Acre Books, 2025) may be seen as a reflection and response to the state of modern American politics—and yet something entirely human and personal at the same time. Clarke strikes a delicate balance between comedy and dread, leading you through stories that are difficult to look away from for all the best reasons. His stories are brimming with dry, sardonic wit that funnels you into what is quite often an isolating, crushing conclusion when his characters come face-to-face with the grim fate that they’ve been living in all along. With an uncanny ability to both turn the mundane into something extraordinary and turn the extraordinary into something entirely mundane, Clarke’s work transports you into a world where nothing works quite as it should—but every moment of emotion and half-real interaction feels ripped straight from a universal understanding of life. His characters are packed with a bizarre yet real amalgamation of obliviousness and vitriol that oozes out of them in just the right way to make you feel pity. And in turn, make it hurt all the more when the veil of absurdity is stripped away to reveal the sad, broken innards that remain at the end of each of Clarke’s works.

     Clarke excels in his absurd concepts—with the headliner story of Special Election being the foremost example of this. The concept of 20th century accordionist Lawrence Welk being brought back from the dead to run for governor of North Dakota feels like something out of a dream, but Clarke’s writing makes it feel like the only possible premise that could make for the emotional logic that drives the story. ‘Dreamlike’ is generally the impression many of Clarke’s stories emit—a reality that feels just slightly off, yet one that tells us so much about the people within it, and in turn ourselves. All of the stories in Special Election are cohesive with each other in a chain of emotional logic. The sense of lost time, wasted lives, and displaced grief that permeates stories such as “Reckonings,” “Chest Bump,” and “Customs and Alterations” contrasts beautifully with the feeling of grasping onto a second chance that drives the conclusions of “Special Election” and “The Slim Jim,“ which Clarke weaves together perfectly with his dry humor.

     The titular story’s supernatural nature sets the tone for an exploration of both the magic and the terror of our mundane, ordinary lives, being brought to life through Clarke’s language in a way that makes them feel just as magical, and far less dismal than they otherwise may. Special Election is a collection in which each story elevates the rest, creating a final product far more than the sum of its parts.