Stories that rely heavily on depictions of violence but dazzle with formal experimentation.
Terrifying stories lay bare the brutality of patriarchy and the violence it metes out on women and children.
Ecuadorian writer Ampuero begins with “Biography,” a nightmarish story of an undocumented woman who travels to a remote house to meet a man who's offered her money to write his life story. In the next tale, “Believers,” a girl living in the shadow of turbulent protests spies on two missionaries who are renting a room from her family. A sense of claustrophobia dwells in these pages. A few stories in, the reader begins to prepare for the horrible thing (or things) that will inevitably happen. Page after page, women and children are brutalized and raped. Confronted by one monstrous scene after another, the reader becomes almost inured to the collection’s representations of violence. The stories are strongest when they avoid relying on the shock value of human cruelty and experiment with the possibilities afforded by the form of the short story. “Pietà,” for instance, is told in a stream-of-consciousness style from the perspective of a nanny and maid who dotingly watches her charge grow up. The singular point of view and the rapid jumps in time reveal, within the span of a few pages, the tragedy of loving someone who's terrible. In “Sacrifices,” the story unfolds completely in direct dialogue between a husband and wife lost in a parking lot. The lack of visual description—usually the bread and butter of fiction—yields deliciously frightening results.
Stories that rely heavily on depictions of violence but dazzle with formal experimentation.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781558612983
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A perfectly charming read for devotees of the written word and anyone who’s ever hoped to find love in a bookstore.
An anonymous note left in a used book creates a surprising love triangle in Seattle.
April knows she’s become a bit too isolated while working remotely for an online real estate company. Her only social interactions come from awkward blind dates and apologetic texts from busy friends who have left her behind. Perhaps it’s this loneliness that causes her to take drastic, romantic action. She leaves an anonymous note in a book she sells to local bookstore Read the Room—it’s meant for the eyes of the cute flannel-wearing man who works at the used-book counter. But that cute employee, Westley, doesn’t see the note before putting the book—Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz—on the shelf. Instead, it’s found by widowed mother Laura, who thinks it’s Westley’s way of covertly communicating with her, and she responds by leaving a note in a copy of The Hunger Games, as April instructed in her original letter. Westley, meanwhile, has no idea why women are staring at him from the young adult section—he’s focused on a movie that’s filming at Read the Room. As April and Laura unwittingly leave each other letters, the many characters in the bookstore’s orbit get to know each other and unlikely connections form. In her debut novel, Seattle Times arts critic Macdonald writes her own love letter to bookstores, and the community and comfort they can provide. The writing has the feel of a British rom-com, despite the Seattle setting, which gives the story a cozy air. Although there are romances brewing, the story is ultimately about the courage it takes to go after the life you want.
A perfectly charming read for devotees of the written word and anyone who’s ever hoped to find love in a bookstore.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851296
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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