Mini Reviews: The Elephant Vanishes || The Complete Stories

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Review: The Complete Stories Of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

Pages: 320

Genre: Literary Short Stories

Publisher: Vintage

Publication Date: January 1993

Ranging from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capote’s oeuvre are here, in stories as elegant as they are heartfelt, as haunting as they are compassionate.

Back when I was a morbid little teenager, I had a slight obsession with In Cold Blood. I don’t know exactly why I loved that book so much, but I think I appreciated how hard Capote tried to get inside the minds of murderers. During college, I read a few of Capote’s short stories, and I really liked them, so I decided to read all of his short stories.

Review: The Shell Collector: Stories – Anthony Doerr

The Shell Collector: Stories – Anthony Doerr

The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr's acclaimed debut collection take readers from the African coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast physical and emotional landscape. Doerr explores the human condition in all its varieties—metamorphosis, grief, fractured relationships, and slowly mending hearts—and conjures nature in both its beautiful abundance and crushing power. Some of his characters contend with tremendous hardship; some discover unique gifts; all are united by their ultimate deference to the mysteries of the universe outside themselves.

Review: If I was forced to make a list of my all-time favorite books, All the Light We Cannot See would probably be on it. Since I love that giant novel so much, I wondered what Anthony Doerr could do with a short story collection. The Shell Collector was published over a decade before All the Light We Cannot See, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I was (mostly) impressed. These world-spanning stories are beautifully written. They take place on beaches and mountains; in sunny Africa and snowy Lapland; in rivers and forests. Each setting is so precisely described that the reader can almost feel the fictional weather. An astounding amount of research must have gone into these stories.

Even though the settings are varied, the stories deal with similar topics. They’re about small mistakes that have dire consequences. The characters are all struggling to survive in a world that’s bigger and more powerful than they’ll ever be.

“Studying ice crystals as a graduate student, he eventually found the basic design (equilateral, equiangled hexagon) so icily repeated, so unerringly conforming, that he couldn't help but shudder: Beneath the splendor—the filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars—was a ghastly inevitability; crystals could not escape their embedded blueprints any more than humans could. Everything hewed to a rigidity of pattern, the certainty of death.” – The Shell Collector

I know that this is a story collection, and that stories in a collection usually deal with similar topics, but most of the stories in this book are too similar for my liking. For example, many of them involve fishing. The only thing more boring than watching people fish is reading about people fishing.

Since most of the stories blurred together in my mind, there are only two that really stand out for me:

The title story “The Shell Collector” has everything I love in a short story. An unusual setting, an unusual protagonist, and a whole lot of secrets. It’s about a blind scientist and his guide dog who live in a hut on the coast of Kenya. They spend their days finding and cataloging different kinds of seashells. One day, the scientist stumbles across a snail that is thought to be poisonous. He inadvertently discovers that the snail’s venom may actually have healing properties. When news of the healing snail becomes public, chaos ensues.

“The shell collector was scrubbing limpets at his sink when he heard the water taxi come scraping over the reef. He cringed to hear it—its hull grinding the calices of finger corals and the tiny tubes of pipe organ corals, tearing the flower and fern shapes of soft corals, and damaging shells too: punching holes in olives and murexes and spiny whelks, in Hydatina physis and Turris babylonia. It was not the first time people tried to seek him out.” – The Shell Collector

My other favorite story is “The Caretaker.” A refugee from Liberia ends up in the US after losing his home and family. He accepts a job as a caretaker in a remote lodge, but he’s unable to perform his caretaker duties. He gets fired. Since he can’t get another job, he moves into the woods near the lodge and tries to rebuild his life from nothing. This story is realistic. It pisses me off when people are hateful and judgmental toward refugees. Most people have no idea what a refugee has lived through.

“‘It’s an issue of duty.’ Her voice tremors; inside, he can see, she’s raging. ‘I told him not to hire you. I told him what good is it hiring someone who runs from his country at the first sign of trouble? He won’t know duty, responsibility. He won’t be able to understand it. And now look.’” – The Shell Collector

TL;DR: Not as good as All The Light We Cannot See, but readers who love nature (and fishing) would probably enjoy this collection.

Review: Dinosaurs On Other Planets: Stories – Danielle McLaughlin

Dinosaurs On Other Planets: Stories – Danielle McLaughlin

A woman battles bluebottles as she plots an ill-judged encounter with a stranger; a young husband commutes a treacherous route to his job in the city, fearful for the wife and small daughter he has left behind; a mother struggles to understand her nine-year-old son’s obsession with dead birds and the apocalypse. In Danielle McLaughlin’s stories, the world is both beautiful and alien. Men and women negotiate their surroundings as a tourist might navigate a distant country: watchfully, with a mixture of wonder and apprehension. Here are characters living lives in translation, ever at the mercy of distortions and misunderstandings, striving to make sense both of the spaces they inhabit and of the people they share them with.

Review: This short story collection isn’t quite what I was expecting. It contains no dinosaurs or other planets, but it does contain realistic stories about characters whose lives have gone slightly off-course.

These are iceberg stories. You only see brief snippets of the characters’ lives, but you know that a lot is happening under the surface. Most things are left unsaid. The characters bury their feelings and don’t find it easy to express their thoughts. This isn’t a collection that a reader can race through. You have to pause after each story and think about it to really understand its meaning.

There’s nothing explicitly sad about the stories, but they all have a heavy, melancholy tone. The characters are on the cusp of major changes in their lives. The reader gets the sense that the characters are holding their breaths, waiting to see which way life shoves them next. There’s an equal chance of things getting dramatically better or dramatically worse.

Danielle McLaughlin’s writing is beautiful. These stories are very well-observed. The author definitely understands human behavior and how subtle actions can sometimes say more than words.

I love the setting. Most of the stories take place in rural Ireland. I’ve never been to Ireland, but the author makes it easy to get a sense of the landscape and the people.

My only complaint about this collection is that some of the stories are too quiet for me. Compared to most short stories, these are quite long. Since they’re long and slow, it sometimes feels like nothing is happening.

Still, I like the tone of the collection and the complex characters. I have to be vague about my favorite stories because they’re too easy to spoil. They don’t have tons of action or unexpected plot twists. Here they are:

In “The Art of Foot-binding,” a rebellious teenage girl comes home with an unusual school assignment. When the girl’s mother confronts the teacher, she learns that her daughter may know more about her parents’ failing marriage than the mother cares to admit. 

“Along the Heron-Studded River” takes place in a rural area. A husband commutes to the city for work every day, but he lives in terror that his wife will harm their young daughter while he’s gone.  

 One of my favorite-favorite stories is “Night of the Silver Fox.” A young truck driver develops an interest in the strong-minded daughter of a fur farmer. He’s devastated to learn that she’s resorting to desperate measures to keep her father’s failing farm from going bankrupt. 

 

“‘It’s what they’re bred for,’ she said, turning away, ‘they don’t know any different.’” – Dinosaurs on Other Planets

 

“Not Oleanders” is the only story that doesn’t take place in Ireland. After a breakup with her lover, Lily travels to Italy alone. To stave off loneliness, she tracks down a fellow tourist who she met on a train, but the encounter doesn’t go as planned. 

 

“Life, after all, was mostly the art of salvage.” – Dinosaurs on Other Planets

 

My other favorite-favorite is the title story, “Dinosaurs on Other Planets.” This one is about dying relationships. A grandmother wants to be involved in the life of her grandson, but she worries that all he’ll remember from his visit to her house is the sheep skull that he found in a field. (And misidentified as a dinosaur skull.)

TL;DR: If you like quiet, highly realistic short stories, this is a must-read.

Review: Lungs Full Of Noise – Tessa Mellas

Lungs Full Of Noise – Tessa Mellas

Figure skaters screw skate blades into the bones of their feet to master elusive jumps. A divorcee steals the severed arm of her ex to reclaim the fragments of a dissolved marriage. Following the advice of a fashion magazine, teenaged girls binge on grapes to dye their skin purple and attract prom dates. And a college freshman wages war on her roommate from Jupiter, who has inadvertently seduced all the boys in their dorm with her exotic hermaphroditic anatomy.

Review: I’m pretty sure this book has one of the greatest covers ever. It’s so perfectly weird. Whoever designed it is brilliant and needs to design more books.

Lungs Full of Noise won the Iowa Short Fiction Award in 2013. I loved one of the other collections that won the Iowa Award, so I decided to give this one a try. Judging by the synopsis, the stories sounded like my kind of bizarre. Now that I’ve read the book, I can confirm that it definitely is bizarre.

Many of these stories focus on characters who are trying to do what society expects from them. Competitive figure skaters make painful alterations to their bodies so they can win competitions. Little girls go to quiet camp and learn to be mute because children should be seen and not heard. Freshman girls dye their skin peacock colors in the hope that senior boys will invite them to prom. This collection makes readers question why people do the things they do. The stories take society’s norms and twist them into grotesque extremes. Even though the plots are fantastical, the characters are relatable. A lot of us have had moments where we think, What the heck am I doing? This is stupid. This book is made up of those moments.

Like most collections, I didn’t love every story. I have to admit that I skimmed a few of them because they are too abstract for my tastes. I lose patience with stories that are all pretty words and no action. Once a piece of writing gets rambley, I’m done.

Still, most of the stories are well-written and have surprising bursts of humor. These are my favorites:

In “Mariposa Girls,” figure skaters discover that some skating maneuvers are easier if they screw the skate blades directly into their feet. Soon, all the best skaters have blades on their feet. To stand out from the crowd, some of the skaters become more extreme. They shave all the hair off their bodies. Then they start skating naked. Then they start painting their bodies. When everybody is extreme, you have to be really extreme to get attention. 

 

“Bibi from Jupiter” is about an alien who comes to Earth to study at an American university. The boys in the dorm building quickly fall in lust with her exoticness. The narrator of this story is an angry, judgmental bitch, which would usually be a turn off for me, but the story is so quirky that I was able to overlook it. 

 

The girls in “Quiet Camp” talk too much. They wear muzzles so that they learn to keep their opinions to themselves, to not ask questions, to not complain when they’re uncomfortable. Good girls are quiet girls. 

 

My favorite story is “Dye Job.” It reminds me of high school and the ridiculousness of teenagers. A group of freshman girls are desperate to attend prom, but they’re not allowed to go unless a junior or senior boy asks them. To get the boys’ attention, the girls try a fad diet that turns their skin purple. The boys definitely notice the purple skin, but as the girls squabble with each other over prom dates, they fail to notice that the boys have a competition of their own going on.

TL;DR: This isn’t the best collection I’ve ever read, and I skimmed some of the stories, but it did give me a lot to think about.

Review: The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories – Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories – Ken Liu

This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken Liu’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).

Review: Before starting this story collection, I had heard a lot about Ken Liu. His work has won basically every sci-fi/fantasy award ever. A lot of the bookworms I follow online are obsessed with his novels. I decided to give his work a shot, even though fantasy and hard sci-fi aren’t my favorite genres. I mean, books set in space are cool, but once an author starts getting into all the mathy minutiae about how space travel works, I stop caring. I worried that these stories might have too much detail for me.

I was definitely right about some of the stories. A few of them are absolute slogs. (Especially “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” and “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King.”) I feel like the author sometimes goes into so much detail about a subject that I lose sight of the plot or characters. Then I stop caring and become tempted to skip to the next story. I didn’t do that, though. I plowed through the whole book. Even the slow bits. *Pats self on back.*

I do like the themes that Ken Liu writes about in this collection. Most of the stories blend Chinese history or legends with futuristic technology. I love that clash between the past and the future. Many of the characters are trying to make peace with their pasts while dealing with futuristic problems.

My favorite stories are the magical realism ones. Ken Liu writes brilliant magical realism. The stories are realistic enough that the author doesn’t have to spend a ton of pages explaining the world, but they’re bizarre enough that I was completely captivated by them. Those stories have the perfect balance of weird and real for me.

I also learned a lot about China from this book. It’s not a place I know much about. If you’re interested in non-western sci-fi/fantasy worlds, then this is a must-read.

For me, these are the stand-out stories:

In “State Change,” people’s souls are random objects. This is a big problem for a woman whose soul is an ice cube. What if it melts? The woman becomes cut off from other people because she spends so much time protecting her soul. Very creative and relatable. 

“Good Hunting” is like a steampunk Chinese myth. This is one of my favorites because it’s twisty and unpredictable. It’s about adapting to change and how our old stories transform as we carry them into the future. 

“The Literomancer” feels more like a historical story than a sci-fi/fantasy story. An American girl befriends a Chinese family. The girl starts telling fantastical stories about the family, which makes the American government suspicious about their activities. Devastating things happen. This story is set during the Cold War and was inspired by real events.

 

“‘Miss Lilly.’ Mr. Kan stood up and solemnly shook her hand. ‘When there is such a large gap of years between two friends, we Chinese call it wang nien chih chiao, a friendship that forgets the years. It’s destiny that brings us together. I hope you will always think of me and Teddy as your friends.’” – The Paper Menagerie

 

Another historical story that was inspired by true events is “All The Flavors.” It’s about the Chinese men who came to Idaho City in the 1800s to find gold. At first, they face discrimination, but soon they become an integral part of the community. I like the parallels between “Logan’s” life and the Chinese God of War stories that he tells. Also, there’s a lot of Chinese food in this story. I love Chinese food. 

My favorite story is “The Paper Menagerie.” This one is stunning. It has origami animals that come to life. It’s about a young man who is struggling with his Chinese-American identity. As a kid, he takes out his anger on his Chinese mother, but when she dies, the origami she leaves behind finally helps him understand her. It’s sad, and magical, and clever, and comes together perfectly in the end.   

My final favorite is “A Brief History Of The Trans-Pacific Tunnel.” I guess this is alternate history? Instead of Chinese immigrants building railroads in North America, they build an underwater railroad from North America to Asia? I don’t know, but it’s a cool story. The main character spends so many years working on the tunnel that he can no longer function above ground. I felt bad for him.

TL;DR: I adored most of the magical realism stories, but I got really bored with the sci-fi ones.

Review: The Beginning Of The World In The Middle Of The Night – Jen Campbell

The Beginning Of The World In The Middle Of The Night – Jen Campbell

Spirits in jam jars, mini-apocalypses, animal hearts and side shows. 

A girl runs a coffin hotel on a remote island. 

A boy is worried his sister has two souls. 

A couple are rewriting the history of the world. 

And mermaids are on display at the local aquarium.

Review: I had a professor who would’ve called this book “masturbatory.” The author obviously enjoyed writing it, but the readers are confused, disturbed, and wondering why they’re looking at it.

Yeah.

I didn’t like that professor, so let’s move swiftly forward and forget I started a book review with a sex reference.

This book was an impulse buy. I saw it on a list of new releases and fell in insta-love with the cover. Then I read the synopsis and thought, Yes, this is a “me” book. Get in my Amazon cart right now.

The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night is a collection of twelve magical realism short stories. “Stories” is probably the wrong word. Maybe “oddities” is better. There are plays, advertisements, letters, all sorts of bizarre little things. Each oddity is different, but they focus on similar themes. The characters are all storytellers, and many of them have complicated relationships with their bodies. (Or other characters’ bodies. Or body parts.) The characters buy hearts online, keep bits of themselves in jam jars, and have mermaid-like appendages. You need a high tolerance for the weird and whimsical if you want to read this collection.

I love bits of this book, but I can’t say I completely love any of the stories. The language is poetic, and there is some stunning imagery. The author has very creative ideas. I like how the real is blended with the fantastical. I just don’t think this book is for me. It kind of feels pretentious? Or maybe I’m not smart enough for it? Most of the stories left me feeling confused. They seem disjointed and unfinished, like all the disparate ideas didn’t come together in the end. I wasn’t always sure what I was supposed to get out of reading them.  

This collection has some amazing reviews on Goodreads, which leads me to believe that I’m just too stupid for it. Other people obviously loved it.

Here are the stories that have stuck in my mind:

In “Animals,” a dude buys a swan heart online and uses it to force a woman to love him. I like the fairytale vibes in this story. It reminds me of a modernized Brothers Grimm tale. It’s also a unique look at obsession and consent. 

“In the Dark” is about a lost pilot who walks into a woman’s home and stays a while. This story is bizarre, but it’s not so abstract that I got confused. 

My favorite is “Little Deaths.” Mostly because I love the imagery. The story is set in a world where ghosts are real, and kids catch them in jam jars. I wish this story was longer. 

“Pebbles” is about love and hate, peace and war. It’s about a romance, but not a particularly happy one. I think this is one of the most cohesive stories in the collection. The writing style didn’t feel as confusingly jarring as the others. 

“Aunt Libby’s Coffin Hotel” reminds me of something Karen Russell would write. Characters go to a hotel to sleep in coffins and experience death. It’s creepy and a bit funny. I could see this story being expanded into a novel.

TL;DR: This book is smarter than me.

Review: Good Bones And Simple Murders – Margaret Atwood

Good Bones And Simple Murders – Margaret Atwood

In this collection of short works that defy easy categorization, Margaret Atwood displays, in condensed and crystallized form, the trademark wit and virtuosity of her best-selling novels, brilliant stories, and insightful poetry. Among the jewels gathered here are Gertrude offering Hamlet a piece of her mind, the real truth about the Little Red Hen, a reincarnated bat explaining how Bram Stoker got "Dracula" all wrong, and the five methods of making a man. There are parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, reconfigured fairy tales, and other miniature masterpieces—punctuated with charming illustrations by the author.

Review: The synopsis of this book isn’t wrong when it says that these stories are hard to categorize. I mean, what even are these things? I guess I’d call them flash fiction or prose poetry. Each story/poem/essay/dialogue thing is only a few pages long. They cover a variety of genres, from realism to magical realism to fairytales to sci-fi. Most of them have a strong feminist slant. Some are abstract; some are straightforward. Some are accompanied by Margaret Atwood’s weird artwork. They’re all beautifully written. I guess there’s a “thing” for everyone in here.

Here are my favorites:

In “Murder in the Dark,” the narrator (or author?) explains how she is going to manipulate the reader in this book. The reader shouldn’t believe anything she says. This is an attention-grabbing way to start the collection. It sets the dark, weird tone.

“Just remember this, when the scream at last has ended and you've turned on the lights: by the rules of the game, I must always lie.” – Good Bones and Simple Murders

“There Once Was” is a dialogue between two anonymous characters who are trying to rewrite a fairytale in a politically correct way. They get nowhere with their story and eventually give up. It’s funny.

“There once was a girl, as average-looking as she was well-adjusted, who lived with her stepmother, who was not a very open and loving person because she herself had been abused in childhood.” – Good Bones and Simple Murders

“Stump Hunting” tells you what to do if you catch a tree stump while fishing and decide to eat it. It’s very useful information. I guess. If you like eating stumps.

Another story that gives useful information is “Making A Man.” It tells you the five different ways to make a man, including out of gingerbread or as folk art.

“Let Us Now Praise Stupid Women” is an ode to all the stupid female characters in stories. As always, Atwood’s social commentary is on-point. The best-known stories in Western culture do contain a lot of women who make terrible choices.

“Let us now praise stupid women, who have given us Literature.” – Good Bones and Simple Murders

“Simmering” shows what the world would be like if every man suddenly became very interested in cooking. Knives are status symbols and there are special handshakes involved. This is a funny piece of social satire. It’s also my favorite story in the collection.

Do you like choose your own adventure stories? I do. With “Happy Endings,” you can choose to give the couple a happily ever after. Or not.

In “Cold-Blooded,” moth-like aliens come to Earth and are baffled by humans. The aliens think moths are clearly the superior species. Sometimes, I agree with them . . .

Finally, there’s “Poppies: Three Variations.” This is like a writing exercise you’d do in school, but when Atwood does something, it’s not an exercise. It’s art. This story takes the words from the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae and uses them to create three distinct flash fiction stories. It’s hard to describe, but it works brilliantly. Most writers probably wouldn’t be talented enough to pull it off.

This collection reminded me why I fell in love with Margaret Atwood’s writing as a teen. It’s quirky, hilarious, and points out the absurdities in the world.

My only complaint is that some of the stories/poems/things are too abstract for my tastes. I don’t like abstract writing because I’m never sure what I’m supposed to get out of it. If I’m going to read something, I want more than just pretty language. I want a plot, characters, or a clear subject. Luckily for me, most of the things in this book aren’t too abstract. This is one of the best collections I’ve read this year.

If you’re a Margaret Atwood fan, then you need to read Good Bones and Simple Murders. This book should also be required reading for all wannabe writers. Atwood is one of those authors who always know how to choose the perfect word. She can say a lot in very little space. The things in this book are tight, clever little pieces of  . . . something.  

Review: The Ghosts Of Heaven – Marcus Sedgwick

The Ghosts Of Heaven – Marcus Sedgwick

A bold, genre-bending epic that chronicles madness, obsession, and creation, from the Paleolithic era through the Witch Hunts and into the space-bound future. 

Four linked stories boldly chronicle madness, obsession, and creation through the ages. Beginning with the cave-drawings of a young girl on the brink of creating the earliest form of writing, Sedgwick traverses history, plunging into the seventeenth century witch hunts and a 1920s insane asylum where a mad poet's obsession with spirals seems to be about to unhinge the world of the doctor trying to save him. Sedgwick moves beyond the boundaries of historical fiction and into the future in the book's final section, set upon a spaceship voyaging to settle another world for the first time.

Review: This is going to sound like the most self-centered thing ever, but I feel like Marcus Sedgwick understands me on a deep level. I’ve never met him and never will, but he can somehow see inside my mind. Like, if I made a list of all my favorite story elements, he’d have a book that has every single one of them. That’s why I’m slowly making my way through his backlist. Marcus and I (I can call him Marcus, right? That’s not creepy, right?) seem to operate on the same wavelength. Or something. I don’t know. It’s very odd. He scoops stuff out of my brain and arranges it on paper in ways I didn’t know were possible.

The Ghosts of Heaven is a bizarre and complicated collection of novellas. Each of the four novellas centers on the different meanings of a spiral. The same spiral imagery runs through the whole book. It’s weird and hard to explain, but I promise it works.

“You want to go back to where you began. You want to find the happiness you once had. But you can never get there, because even if you somehow found it, you yourself would be different. You would have changed, from your journey alone, from the passing of time, if nothing else. You can never make it back to where you began, you can only ever climb another turn of the spiral stair. Forever.” – The Ghosts of Heaven

The first novella is written in verse. It stars an ancient human girl who scribbles meaningless shapes in the dirt. After her tribe is attacked by invaders, she realizes that she could have saved her family if she’d been able to use the shapes to convey meaning. This is my favorite novella in the book. The verse makes it a quick read. It’s suspenseful and beautiful and haunting. I knew that Marcus Sedgwick was a brilliant prose writer, but it turns out that he can write verse, too. I guess he’s one of those annoying people who are amazing at everything.

Story number 2 jumps forward to the witch hunt years. A preacher comes to town to bring Christianity to a population whose beliefs seem to be a mixture of Christianity and Pagan-ish rituals. Shortly after the preacher arrives, a young boy has a seizure while playing with a spinning top. The preacher accuses the boy’s sister of using witchcraft to cause the seizure. This story has a few too many characters, viewpoints, and plotlines for my tastes, but it’s still my second-favorite in the book. It’s a slow-motion train wreck (in a good way). You know it’s going to end badly, but you’re too mesmerized to look away.

The third novella is my least favorite. It’s set in an insane asylum in the early 1900s. The main character is a doctor. One of his patients is a poet who’s afraid to walk up the asylum’s spiral staircase. The novella is written in diary form. The plot and characters are compelling, but again, there’s a lot going on in this story. I didn’t think all the disparate threads came together as well as they could have.

“The only true connection we have to the world is our minds. Yes, our senses can feed us information, but the information means nothing on its own. It is our minds that give things meaning. It is our minds that create the world for us. And minds can be mistaken. Minds can become confused. Damaged. What then of the world? How does it appear then? It, too, appears confused and damaged.” – The Ghosts of Heaven

The final story is science fiction. Five hundred people are traveling through space to find a new Earth. Twenty-something years into the mission, someone starts murdering the travelers. The main character discovers that there’s a mathematical pattern to the murders, and the murderer may be using math to warn him about the future of the mission. I love the suspenseful murder mystery aspect of this novella, but the ending is confusing. I’m not good enough at math or science to understand it. Basically, time and parallel universes get messed up near a black hole. This novella is for smart people. I am not one of those people.

“To see yourself on camera is not a natural thing, a thing no normal person is comfortable with; for it shows us as others see us, not as who we believe we really are.” – The Ghosts of Heaven

I think this is a book that readers will either love or hate. It depends on your tolerance for weirdness. Personally, I love it. If you like Midwinterblood, you’ll probably like The Ghosts of Heaven because they have similar structures.

Also, can anyone tell me why this book is marketed as YA? Most of the characters are adults. Unless I missed something, it doesn’t deal with typical YA themes. Is it just marketed to teens because the author’s other books are for teens?

Whatever this book is, I enjoyed it immensely. I already want to reread it because it’s so complicated that I think I’ll get more out of it on the next go-around. I’m eagerly looking forward to whatever Marcus Sedgwick writes next. 

Review: There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family – Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children, Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family – Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

After her work was suppressed for many years, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya won wide recognition for capturing the experiences of everyday Russians with profound pathos and mordant wit. Among her most famous and controversial works, these three novellas—The Time Is Night, Chocolates with Liqueur (inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”), and Among Friends—are modern classics that breathe new life into Tolstoy’s famous dictum, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Together they confirm the genius of an author with a gift for turning adversity into art.

Review: This review is for the English translation of a Russian novella collection.

This is the second Ludmilla Petrushevskaya book I’ve read, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I just don’t understand what’s great about her writing. These three novellas are intriguing enough that I finished them, but I can’t say I liked them or enjoyed the reading experience. They’re just so rambley! It’s infuriating.

The first novella, The Time Is Night, is written stream-of-consciousness style. The main character is a poet who seems to hate the women in her family. She put her mother in an old folks’ home and doesn’t get along with her daughter or granddaughters. However, she’d do anything for her grandson and her criminal son. (Even though she kind of hates them, too?) She’s basically an all-around horrible person. She’s been so beaten down by living in constant poverty that she’s mostly given up on life. The stream-of-consciousness writing style makes the story hard to follow. It jumps around in time without warning and rambles on for over 100 pages. The characters are mildly interesting because they’re all horrible, but there isn’t a plot. This is my least-favorite novella in the book.

I had slightly better luck with Chocolates with Liqueur. It’s mostly linear, so it’s easier to understand. It stars a father who feeds poisoned chocolates to his wife and children, but they fail to die. What follows is a weird and suspenseful tale of a woman trying to protect her children from her psychotic husband. This is my favorite story in the collection, but I didn’t love it. I have a hard time with Petrushevskaya’s writing style. There’s so much distance between the characters and the reader that I was never able to connect with the characters. I just didn’t care about them.

The ending of the final story, Among Friends, caught me off-guard. This novella is about a group of friends (or, more accurately, frenemies). The story covers a long stretch of time and shows how relationships change as people get older. Near the end of the story, one of the friends is diagnosed with a deadly illness. She goes to great lengths to ensure that her friends will care for her son if she dies. Honestly, I considered giving up on this novella. Similar to the first story, it rambles. I didn’t feel like it was going anywhere or building to anything. The ending is great, but getting to the end was a struggle.

My favorite part of the book is the introduction. The translator gives background information that is very helpful for readers who are not familiar with life in Soviet Russia. Writing these stories could have gotten Petrushevskaya in trouble with her country’s government because they show Russians in a negative light. Her characters are poor, overworked, starving, mentally ill people who live in crowded communal apartments. The stories are full of hopelessness and casual violence. I appreciate the bravery it took for Petrushevskaya to show her country in an honest way, but this book wasn’t for me.

Review: The Lottery And Other Stories – Shirley Jackson

The Lottery And Other Stories – Shirley Jackson

“The Lottery,” one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. “Powerful and haunting,” and “nights of unrest” were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites “The Lottery” with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range—from the hilarious to the truly horrible—and power as a storyteller.

Review: “The Lottery” is one of my favorite short stories of all time. I first studied it in college and loved the slow buildup of tension and the unexpected ending. As soon as I finished “The Lottery,” I vowed to read all of Shirley Jackson’s work. Unfortunately, I’m a slacker. I graduated from college years ago, and I’m just now getting around to doing what I said I would.

“Unusual” is a good way to describe Shirley Jackson’s short stories. Most of the 24 tales in this collection feature ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. Mothers lose their identities at the orthodontist; townspeople ponder the fate of a chicken-killing dog; and old men tell children about the murders they committed. There isn’t much violence on the page, but it lurks in the background of every sentence. Many of the characters seem mentally ill. There’s a sense that the careful masks people wear in public could slip, and something could go horribly wrong at any moment.

“Upstairs Margaret said abruptly, 'I suppose it starts to happen first in the suburbs,' and when Brad said, 'What starts to happen?' she said hysterically, 'People starting to come apart.” – The Lottery and Other Stories

Most of the stories are about the small unkindnesses that happen every day. That’s what makes the characters so relatable. Shirley Jackson must have been a very observant person. She perfectly captures the moments where people are carelessly and unknowingly mean to each other. These stories are subtle, yet impressive. They chronicle the everyday horrors that we all have to face. In Jackson’s world, the “monsters” are racism, greed, superiority, suppression, lies, and alienation.

Here are my favorite stories:

In “Charles,” a kindergartner entertains his parents with tales of “Charles,” a misbehaving classmate. The boy’s nosy mother becomes desperate to meet Charles’s parents. This story is predictable, but I liked waiting to see if the characters would figure out what was going on.

A family gets new neighbors in “Of Course.” At first, the mother is excited for her kids to have new playmates, but the new neighbors are so stuck-up and opinionated that the relationship goes downhill fast. This story is relatable. We’ve all had the misfortune of meeting people who think they’re better than us. Also, I laughed at the last line.

I think a lot of bookworms can relate to “Seven Types of Ambiguity.” Two men want the same antique book. One wants it because it looks pretty; the other wants to read it. Who will get the book? This story made me sad. And angry. 

Finally, “The Lottery” is a classic American short story. It’s had a massive impact on modern horror and dystopian fiction. It’s about a town that holds a lottery every year, but it’s not the type of lottery that you want to win. That’s all I’ll say about it. Go read it, if you haven’t already.

Like I said earlier, the stories in this collection are subtle. They’re not the type of thing you can read in a hurry. You’ll need some time to mentally process them after they’re over. For me, a few of the stories are too subtle. (Or possibly too dated? This collection was first published in 1949. Social conventions have changed since then.) I think I missed the point of a few stories. They just dragged. Nothing happened. I wanted them to be over so I could move on to the next one. Luckily, there are 24 stories in this book, so there’s something for everyone.

I didn’t like every story in this collection, but I liked them enough that I’m eager to read Jackson’s novels. But, since I’m a world-class slacker, it’ll probably take me a while. Check back in seven years to see how I feel about The Haunting of Hill House . . .