Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (2017)

I am on a short story kick the past couple of months. I'm also trying to go back and read the books that have been languishing on my To Read list the longest, which is what made me pick this one up now. Several of my coworkers have read it and raved about it, but somehow I kept putting it off.

There are a total of eight stories in this book, and I'm sorry to admit that I read only seven and a half of them. One is a tediously long list of summaries of (fake?) Law and Order episodes, and it was amusing at first but I've never watched the show so probably am missing a lot of the point and also it went on for far too long. Finally I couldn't stand to read any more so after 35 pages I decided to skip the second half of the story.

Otherwise, the stories were great! They were weird and creepy and I often couldn't tell if something was actually happening or if the person was delusional in some way, but I liked that. Many of them are difficult to describe adequately.

"The Husband Stitch" is the story of a relationship and marriage, and the wife's refusal to explain to her husband why she always wears a green ribbon around her neck. In "Inventory" a woman recounts all her sexual encounters, and after the first few it grew decidedly dark as they all happened against the backdrop of an apocalyptic descent. The main character in "Mothers" has just been handed a baby by her female lover and now has to take care of it...but I'm not sure there is actually a baby. "The Resident" is about a writer attending a residency near where she attended Girl Scout Camp as a kid, and her experiences and the other people there are strange in a way that is hard to describe. It's probably my favorite in the collection, though it's hard to say what it's even about.

Machado's writing is a pleasure to read, and even the story I ultimately didn't like was actually written well, it was just far, far too long. They all have an otherworldly quality to them, yet are still full of sharp, palpable imagery. I'm sorry it took me so long to pick this book up.

This Is Not Your City

This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks (2011)

Ok, I know I told you that Vampires in the Lemon Grove was really good, but I think this short story collection is even better. It all started several years ago when a coworker told me how good the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories is. I read it and agreed (though I had no basis for comparison, not having read any other editions.) My favorite story in the collection was "The Sleep" by Caitlin Horrocks, who I had never heard of before. I told everyone about that story and I kept thinking about it. Recently - a full seven years after reading it the first time - I finally read it again. I still love it. So I looked for more by this author and found this book.

It starts strong with "Zolaria," an unusual telling of childhood friendship and imagination in which the narrator speaks in future tense of later events, her best friend Hanna's devastating illness and her own marriage. The second story - probably my favorite - is called "It Looks Like This." It's a school assignment written by a girl who had to drop out to take care of my mother who has rheumatoid arthritis and can no longer use her hands. The assignment may be enough to allow her to graduate and she tries to fill it with knowledge she remembers from class and related skills she uses in her life, such as the geometry required to sew quilts. She also talks about her friendship, if it is in fact a friendship, with a young Amish neighbor. I love the narrative voice, the honest and earnestness of this character, her inclusion of maps and photos, and the way she accepts that she'll be spending the next several decades devoted to taking care of her mother.

"Zero Conditional" is about a teacher who is cruel to her students, and it sneaks up on you because she seems so reasonable until then. Even more upsetting was "Steal Small," probably the most unpleasant story in the bunch because it's about a couple who procure dogs and make money off them, and you just know that whatever happens to the dog isn't good, and this is confirmed. I can't stand animal cruelty, but I have to admit the story was effective and well-written. Speaking of stories that are disturbing, in "Embodied" the protagonist claims to be on her 127th life and she starts recognizing people from previous lives and she has a baby who died and when you learn the whole story about that it is just shocking and bizarre.

The title story is about a woman who has married through a matchmaking service, leaving Russia with her teenage daughter to start a new life. They are in Finland now (also the setting for "Going to Estonia") and the daughter goes out with boyfriend and doesn't return. His family reports them as missing, and the woman needs her new husband to talk to the police for her since she doesn't speak Finnish. It's a tragic story, but not in the way you expect. The final story, "In the Gulf of Aden, Past the Cape of Guardafui" is also a sad family story, but in a different way. A couple is traveling and they meet other people and tell them about their kid, except they tell different stories each time. We don't know until late in the story why they are lying. In the meantime their cruise ship is hijacked by pirates. This couple really needs a break.

Many of the stories involve travel, which means the characters are out of their elements, lending a feeling of alienation. They are not as strange or bizarre as many short stories tend to be, focused instead on relationships and tragedy. I also feel like they are somehow not as literary as most short stories I've read and no, I can't really explain what I mean by that but it's definitely a compliment.

This is not an especially well-known collection of stories and in fact is only owned by a few libraries in my network. But I believe it deserves a wider audience, and I look forward to more stories by Horrocks.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (2013)

This was sort of an impulse checkout from the library. I wanted to read short stories, and I specifically wanted to read Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, but the library copy was in disgusting condition so I sent it to mending instead. Since I don't read many short stories I didn't have another collection on my To Read list, but over the years I've heard repeatedly how good this one is, so I grabbed it.

Karen Russell became known several years ago with Swamplandia!, a book I still have no interest in reading, but I thought stories would be more manageable because I could just try one or two and then stop if I didn't like them. But I kept going because these stories are pretty great.

The title story is exactly what it sounds like - it's about a couple of vampires who hang out in a lemon grove because they feed on lemons instead of the blood of people. To be honest, I didn't quite understand this story when all was said and done so it wasn't my favorite. More interesting, and weirder, was "Reeling For the Empire" in which girls in Japan are taken from their homes and turned into human versions of silkworms. Their bellies expand with the silk they need to release from their fingertips in an endless daily cycle. It was horrific. In "Proving Up" homesteaders in Nebraska await an inspector who will hopefully legalize their claims, but they don't all have the required glass window, so a teenage boy is tasked with delivering the one window to various households in turn, but he gets caught in a freak storm. Possibly my favorite in the collection was "The Barn at the End of Our Term," in which several former U.S. Presidents are reincarnated as horses who all end up on the same farm. It was bizarre and amusing. Where the hell does she get these crazy ideas?

Although I liked some more than others, there really wasn't a dud in the bunch. Probably my least favorite was the final story, "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis," which was still a good story but it was about a bunch of bully kids and a scarecrow and I don't like bullies or scarecrow. Also there was a rabbit that I was worried about because I don't like when people mistreat animals.

These stories are imaginative and generally pretty weird. Why are short stories always so strange and unsettling? It's as though all short stories are horror stories. This was a great choice to read while working on the Jessica Darling series. I can't just read a book of short stories because I like to read each story in one sitting if possible and I need to pace myself. This one was a great choice and if you like short stories I encourage you to give it a try!

Toil & Trouble

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Jessica Spotswood and Tess Sharpe (2018)

I am feeling very pleased with myself about actually reading this book at a somewhat seasonal time! This is a teen anthology of stories about witchy girls, and there's a lot of diversity as I have come to expect from Jessica Spotswood's anthologies. They're a mix of contemporary and historical with characters of different backgrounds, but always strong females and a lot of sisterhood.

Of course I had a few favorites. "Afterbirth" by Andrea Cremer was a chilling tale about midwives in Puritan New England. A young apprentice assists with an unusual birth that turns tragic, and the midwife is held responsible. "The Heart In Her Hands" by Tess Sharpe is set in a world where a sort of magical tattoo appears on young women, telling them the first words that will be spoken to them by their soulmate. But Brenna already has a soulmate, a girl, and she refuses the boy who speaks the prophetic words to her. "The Truth About Queenie" by Brandy Colbert is about a young witch who wants to keep her powers secret; also secret is that she's in love with her best friend, Webb. When he brings home a girlfriend for her to meet, her hopes are crushed. This story made me want more, in a good way. There's enough here about Queenie and Webb's friendship, and Queenie's powers and her family, for a full-length novel and I would definitely read it. "The Legend of Stone Mary" by Robin Talley was a creepy small-town legend about a mysterious statue that is said to come to life under the right circumstances, and a teenaged girl who is a descendant of the subject of the statue.

Now I'm realizing I have too many favorites to relate them all in details, but others include "The One Who Stayed" by Nova Ren Suma, "Divine Are the Stars" by Zoraida Cordova, "Daughters of Baba Yaga" by Brenna Yovanoff, "The Well Witch" by Kate Hart, "Beware of Girls With Crooked Mouths," by Jessica Spotswood, and "Love Spell" by Anna-Marie McLemore. There were really only a few stories I wasn't really into, and in a couple of those cases I think I just shouldn't have started a story when I was already tired. It takes some focus to get into a new story and that's one of the difficulties of reading a short story collection.

All in all, I really enjoyed this collection and recommend it if you're looking for some witchy-themed fall reading!

Growing Things

Growing Things by Paul Tremblay (2019)

I've never read Paul Tremblay before, but saw him speak on a panel at the Massachusetts Library Association Conference in May. I went to the panel because Peter Swanson was on it, but also enjoyed hearing from Paul Tremblay and Katherine Hall Page, and grabbed copies of all their recent/upcoming books. Tremblay's Growing Things was just released this week.

The collection begins with the title story, in which two girls and their father are holed up in their house while some sort of out-of-control plant seems to be taking over the world. We don't get a lot about the bigger picture since we're just hearing from the girls' perspective, but of course that makes it all the more creepy and mysterious. And as I look back at it now, I realize the characters have the same names - Merry and Marjorie - as those in the final story in the collection, "The Thirteenth Temple." I can't immediately see how they're related, but I understand from the notes at the end of the book that Tremblay often writes stories set in worlds he has created previously.

"Growing Things" isn't the only story with an apocalyptic feel. In "Where We All Will Be," Zane is troubled by his father's suddenly odd behavior and compulsion to get in the car and drive towards...something. Everyone else seems to be doing the same thing, but Zane seems to be immune, perhaps because his brain is somehow different from other people's as they learned when he was a kid. "It's Against the Law to Feed the Ducks" is about a family on vacation, told from the perspective of a young child who can see that something very strange is happening, and we can tell it's some sort of doomsday scenario, but what? In a way, I'd love to know more about what is actually going on in this stories, but I don't think any explanation could improve upon the feels of uncertainty and apprehension Tremblay cultivates.

While those may be my favorites in the collection (I do love a good apocalypse) there are others that were also especially...effective. I can't say I love them since they make me so uncomfortable but they certainly do what they set out to do and I have a great appreciation for that. "------------" (which is an annoying title for a story) begins with a man enjoying a day at the beach with his kids. A woman shows up, acting super familiar like they know each other. He tries to figure out where he knows her from, feeling a little uncomfortable as she acts more and more like they are close, and he kinda wishes his wife was there. She also acts familiar with the kids, like she's their mom, and as the guys packs up to leave, she's all like "wait! don't leave me behind!" and gets in the car with them. All this time he's asking himself who this woman is and why she's acting like he should know her. It's so very unsettling.

A few of the stories are pretty experimental in form. "A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken" is told like a choose-your-own-adventure, and "Further Questions for the Somnambulist" is pages and pages of three columns of questions and I don't quite understand it. "Notes for 'The Barn in the Wild'" reminded me a bit of House of Leaves, with its diary format and footnotes and underlined and crossed out sentences, like you're hearing the story in real-time, a stream of consciousness, complete with tangents and asides.

Some of the stories worked more for me than others, as is always the case with a collection of short stories, but I could almost always at least appreciate it on some level. I read the collection fairly slowly over a couple of weeks and was very unsure how to rate it on Goodreads, which is also generally a problem with short story collections. But now as I look back and remind myself about everything that I read, it seems clear to me that it's a pretty solid 4 stars. I think it's worth pointing out that Tremblay is a high school math teacher when he's not writing, and I love that his day job is so incredibly different - English teacher we'd expect, but math? He's most well known for The Cabin at the End of the World which recently won the Bram Stoker award, and which I should probably consider reading. He's clearly a very talented horror writer and I'm sorry I missed him up until now. I'm glad I impulsively grabbed a copy of his book!

A couple of short books

Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak (2018)

Girl Town is a collection of five stories in graphic format. The cover illustration is of Betsy from the first story, "Girl Town." It's about three young woman who live next door to three other woman who they find kind of terrifying but also compelling. In "Radishes," a girl convinces her friend to skip school and go to a very strange market where they sample some produce that has surprising effects. "Diana's Electric Tongue" is about a woman who buys herself a robot boyfriend. "The Big Burning House" is about a cult movie that has been lost and nobody can quite remember all the details, and two women who have a podcast about it have suddenly obtained a copy of it that will answer all their questions. In "Please Sleep Over" a young woman invites her friend to stay at a house that apparently belongs to her parents and honestly I am not quite sure what is going on. The two women arrive wearing some sort of medals around their necks that aren't ever explained, a stranger comes into the house talking like she knows them, and the ending doesn't make sense to me.

Anyhow, my favorite was "Diana's Electric Tongue" although I really liked "Radishes" quite a lot too. I could see myself going back to read those again.


Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath (2019)

Speaking of stories where I don't really know what was going on, this never-before-published short story by Sylvia Plath was pretty weird. She submitted it to a magazine when she was in college and it was rejected, and it was just published for the first time in a standalone volume. This seems to be a thing now - publishing a short story all by itself - and I'm not sure what I think of it. At any rate, I wasn't about to pass up something by Sylvia Plath.

In this story, Mary reluctantly leaves her parents on a train where she is going to a place called The Ninth Kingdom. What is the Ninth Kingdom and why is she going there? Who the hell knows. Well, one lady knows, I think, and she's sitting next to Mary on the train. She's friendly and knows more than she's really letting on, but she won't actually tell Mary (or us) anything. I don't know if Mary's parents sent her away or if she's ever expected to come back or what explanation she has for her journey. Her parents make a reference to "time to leave home" so it doesn't sound ominous. But the woman on the train makes the trip often and seems to have some sort of business interest in it. When Mary talks about how luxurious the trip is, the woman says you pay for it in the end. "The train company has more than a pure friendly interest in the passengers." And then they came to a stop and a woman whose ticket was for that stop had to be forced off, which implies that the passengers don't like where they're going.

I think the whole thing might be an allegory about becoming an adult and choosing your path in life. The woman on the train says the passengers bought their tickets and chose their destinations and they can't now decide to get off elsewhere. Mary is destined for the final stop, and the older woman describes the Ninth Kingdom as "the kingdom of negation, of the frozen will." But there is one way that Mary can escape her fate, which makes it all a little bit less ominous. I read the story twice, and although it still doesn't 100% make sense to me, I feel pretty confident about my interpretation.

How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin (2018)

We're not going anywhere until we talk about this cover and title. I mean, come on. That amazing hair with those weird but cool adornments, the cool but self-confident look on the young woman's face, the necklace. The fact that she doesn't care we're here because she has other things to think about. The moment I read this title in a review I told a coworker who instantly decided it will be the theme of our annual Black History Month display and now our display will be about Afro-futurism.

Also, this is a collection of short stories by N.K. Jemisin and if you've been following along at home you'll know that I read the Broken Earth series late in 2018, all three books right in a row. This author is so imaginative and perfectly executes all her ideas, as she shows us in this collection. These stories range from AI taking on a life of its own to a mysterious restaurant that can re-create any meal you've had in your life down to the tiniest ingredients if you just tell them the date on which you ate it.

There are a lot of stories in this collection, 22 I think. Some are set in the same, or similar, worlds but in general they're so different from each other. Which I guess is the thing about science fiction and fantasy. There's a story set in the Broken Earth world, and I think one set in the Dreamblood world, though I'm not sure as I haven't read that series (yet.) There was not a story that I disliked or even found meh.

Ones that I remember vividly a few days after having finished the whole collection: "L'Alchimista," in which a mysterious stranger approaches a chef with a strange bundle of ingredients and recipe for her to make for him (it doesn't sound like much, but trust me). In "The Effluent Engine" a Haitian woman visits New Orleans to ask a particular man for help developing an engine to turn rum by-product into a power source, but finds his sister more helpful in the process and, not insignificantly, more attractive. "Valedictorian" takes place in an isolated place in which the top and bottom students are sent outside, never to return, and although everyone is afraid of going one student is still determined to be at the top of her class. In "Walking Awake" children are raised and used to be bodies for beings that change them out like outfits. I can't even adequately describe "The Trojan Girl."

Short stories will probably never be as appealing to me as novels. Reading a collection can be jarring, switching from one to another just when you've gotten the lay of the land and figured out what's going on. Sometimes a short story is enough unto itself, and at other times I wish it were a whole novel. There were both kinds in this collection and I feel like I visited so many different worlds and people and people who were maybe not quite people. Speculative fiction is weird. But I do know one thing, which is that N.K. Jemisin is excellent at writing it.

The Radical Element

The Radical Element: 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes and Other Dauntless Girls, edited by Jessica Spotswood (2018)

Back of November of 2016 I posted about A Tyranny of Petticoats, a feminist anthology edited by Jessica Spotswood. The Radical Element is the follow-up, and it's just as good.

There weren't any stories I disliked, but four of them particularly stood out to me. "Lady Firebrand" by Megan Shepherd takes place in South Carolina in 1863. Rose is visiting an aunt and uncle with her friend Pauline, a free black woman. They are unhappy about Pauline's presence, but Rose claims she is specially trained to help people who use wheelchairs (which Rose does). Coincidentally (or not?) their visit coincides with a rash of crimes committed by a mysterious Northern Sympathizer called Lord Firebrand.

In "Step Right Up" by Jessica Spotswood, a young woman in Tulsa in 1905 eagerly anticipates the annual visit by a traveling circus. She has been obsessed by the high wire act since she first saw it, and hopes that this year she can finally pursue her dream. Ruby's Uncle Jack, however, is an abusive hothead who doesn't care what she wants and she'll need to contend with him before she can really be free.

Anna-Marie McLemore's "Glamour" is set in the roaring 20s and stars a young woman who is pursuing fame despite not looking the part, but she has a special power that allows her to change her appearance. Grace is Mexican-American and disguising her appearance doesn't keep others' cruel words from affecting her. It's getting harder and harder to pretend she's someone she's not, but how else can she fit in?

"When the Moonlight Isn't Enough" by Dhonielle Clayton is about a very unusual family with a secret they've kept hidden by moving to a new place every few years. Emma is tired of just being a teenage girl who needs to obey her parents, and can't ever form friendships because they'll just be over the next time they need to move. She wants to do something more with her life, something real, something involved, but she also needs to keep her secret closely guarded.

Interestingly, these last two contain otherworldly elements, magical realism, I guess. I remember from A Tyranny of Petticoats the stories I liked least were those with the same kind of elements. I don't know if these stories are just better or if my tastes have changed, but I was a little surprised at how much I liked "Glamour" and "When the Moonlight Isn't Enough." I was less surprised how much I liked the first two I mentioned. These stories are full of young women trying to make their lives their own, despite the expectations of those around them. In some cases, the characters are non-white, which proves extra difficult in the context in which they're living, and the stories also include LGBTQ and gender non-conforming people. There are all sorts of ways these characters are being hindered from living their best lives, but still they persist.

I found the stories in this collection inspiring and hopeful, and just as with A Tyranny of Petticoats I also learned more about the historical periods in which they took place. The authors included notes about the settings and characters which give us a broader context in which to understand the stories. All together this was a very enjoyable collection, and I've found some new authors I now want to read!

The Lottery and Other Stories

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (1949)

Although I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle and the short story "The Lottery" when I was a teenager, it is only recently that I've become somewhat of a die-hard Shirley Jackson fan. I even read a biography about her a couple of years ago. So this year I decided to revisit "The Lottery" and read some of her other short stories as well.

The stories are divided into four sections. In the first section, most of the stories are about someone taking liberties in someone else's home. For instance, in "Like Mother Used To Make," a meticulous man has prepared dinner to share with his neighbor, and while they're eating someone enters their building to visit his neighbor. She ushers him into the apartment, inviting him to join them, and then pretends as though it's her own apartment and she has cooked the meal. The man who actually lives there, is left to go to his neighbor's messy, disordered apartment and stay there until her friend leaves and he can return to his place.

The second part seems to be about propriety and convention, and the way people in communities judge each other and their behavior. A couple of them were about race and I'm sorry to say that things haven't changed as much as they should have between the present day and time in which the stories were written. "After You, My Dear Alphonse" begins with a woman's young son bringing a friend home for lunch. The friend is black, and the woman keeps making assumptions about him and his family. She asks questions and seems surprised at the answers, like when she learns that his mother doesn't have a job. Her own son points out that she herself doesn't have a job, so why would Boyd's mother? She then assumes that he has lots of brothers and sisters. It culminates with the woman trying to give the boy some of their old clothes, and when he says that they have plenty of clothes, she gets angry and points out that "many little boys like you" would be grateful for the offer.

The theme of the third section is less clear to me, but the stories contain disorientation or unease or minor slights against others. I can't pick a favorite from this section, but I think I was most struck by "Seven Types of Ambiguity," in which a couple visits a bookstore hoping to buy large quantities of books, sets of books, presumably more for decorating than reading. While they're there, a boy comes in to spend time reading a book that he comes in for every day but hasn't been able to buy. Before they leave, the couple add that book to their purchase.

The final section ends with "The Lottery," but also contains several other stories about fear or being trapped. (Honestly, it's an interesting but difficult exercise to look at groups of stories and try to coax out the common thread.) In "Pillar of Salt" a young woman looks forward to vacation in New York with her husband and enjoys it for a while, until they find a disembodied leg. The incident casts a pall over everything, and the woman comes a bit unmoored, suddenly afraid of everything around her until one day she can't even manage to cross the street by herself and ends up calling her husband to come get her. Now that I think of it, the stories in this section all start out with a fairly everyday vibe and then take an unexpectedly dark turn.

"The Lottery" is the story Jackson is undoubtedly most famous for, but stands out from the other stories in the book in that it takes place in a kind of dystopian village and the others are more firmly rooted in our own society. But some of the themes are the same - societal norms, traditions, the expectation to conform. Don't go into this book thinking the stories will all be like this one, but there are definitely some common threads. There were only a couple of stories in the collection that left me feeling like I had no idea what they were getting at, and I imagine that's my own shortcoming, not Jackson's. Mostly, I found a lot to think about, particular in the ways our culture has changed, and how it has stayed the same, since Jackson's time. I'm very glad to have finally read this collection.

This book is part of my 2018 TBR Pile Challenge. It's actually one of my alternates, though now I don't know why it wasn't on my main list. It also feels like I shouldn't be reading my alternates before I've even tried reading all of my regular list, but this is just what I felt like reading at the time. Plus, somehow I managed to put a lot of long books on the list, and I wanted something shorter to read. At any rate, the challenge is going very well so far. Check the page I linked to above to see my whole list, and links to posts about the books I've read so far.

My True Love Gave To Me

My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories edited by Stephanie Perkins (2014)

This is a collection of short stories, mostly Christmas themed, and all with a bit of romance, written by some of the most popular authors who write for teens. Out of the twelve authors in the collection, I've read books by six and have heard great things about four others, leaving only two authors I hadn't heard of before. What a treat! These stories run the gamut from realistic fiction to fantasy, with many somewhere in between.

One of the new-to-me authors I was excited about was Kelly Link and her story "The Lady and the Fox" did not disappoint. Miranda's mother is in prison in Thailand so Miranda spends every Christmas with her godparents, the Honeywells. Every time it snows on Christmas a mysterious man appears outside the house and Miranda is determined to find out who he is. Matt de la Peña, another author I'd heard of but never read, wrote one called "Angels in the Snow," which I think was one of my favorites in the collection. A young guy is housesitting over his college Christmas break because he can't afford to go home, but he also can't afford to eat. He befriends a young woman in the building but tries to hide his hunger from her. "The Girl Who Woke the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor was a fantasy, fairy-tale like and totally beautiful and kind of weirdish in a really good way. She's the author of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, which has just jumped up a few notches on my imaginary TBR list.

Those were all on the more serious side of the collection, comparatively. "Welcome to Christmas, CA" by Kiersten White (who I hadn't heard of before) takes place in a diner when a new, magical, and definitely good-looking cook is hired. The food bits were super fun, although there was a fairly serious subplot, and a pretty touching story about Maria's family. Another great one was "Star of Bethlehem" by Ally Carter in which a teenage girl impulsively trades plane tickets with a similar-looking girl from Sweden who wants to fly to New York instead of going to Oklahoma to visit her long-distance boyfriend. For reasons we learn later, our protagonist is trying to escape her life and although she knows her scheme is not going to work she's willing to try. So she goes to Oklahoma and meets the Swedish girl's boyfriend and his family.

So far, all these great stories I've mentioned were by authors I hadn't even read before. But there are also authors in this collection that I already knew I liked! "Polaris is Where You'll Find Me" by Jenny Han is about a human living among elves at the North Pole and doesn't quite fit in. It sounds like the movie Elf, but it's totally not. (Although I also love Elf.) It was fun and light and festive. "It's a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown" by editor Stephanie Perkins is about a somewhat-accidental acquisition of a Christmas tree by a teenage girl, and the boy who helps her bring it to her apartment that doesn't actually have room for it. Rainbow Rowell's "Midnights" began the collection with a romance that takes place on several New Year's Eves and, like her books, it's hard to describe why it is so wonderful.

This is the problem with short story collections. I just end up summarizing what the stories are about as briefly as possible and take up a ton of space just with that, without even going into everything I like about them. And that's not even all of them. (I didn't even tell you about "Krampuslauf" by Holly Black or "Your Temporary Santa" by David Levithan even though I liked both of them a lot.) I liked that there was a variety of styles and genres included, and that the stories covered Christmas, New Year's Eve, Advent, and Hanukkah, and some of the characters were Jewish and the romances were between a girl and boy or a boy and another boy or a girl and someone who is maybe not quite human. And although they're mostly festive and fun and light they also touch on serious issues, and one asks a question that I keep thinking about and can't answer. ("Would you rather be great at something you like, or just ok at something you love?" Man, I don't know!)

If you just like fantasy or just like realistic fiction you'd have to pick and choose from this collection, which I recommend if you recognize the authors from your most-loved genres. But if - like me - you read in various genres you'll probably enjoy the whole thing as much as I did.

A Tyranny of Petticoats

A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls, edited by Jessica Spotswood (2016)

If you have been reading this blog for a while you probably know how much I love author Jessica Spotswood. The Cahill Witch Chronicles is one of my favorite series, and I love her new contemporary novel Wild Swans. I'm very happy that Spotswood has stuck to her feminist tradition and edited this book of short stories that feature a diverse cast of young female characters making their way in the world and creating the lives they want. Authors include such well-known names as Marie Lu, Elizabeth Wein, and Marissa Mayer, plus several authors who are completely new to me. All stories are historical fiction that take place in the United States, but some have elements of fantasy and magical realism. They are arranged chronologically, the year and location listed below each title, beginning in 1710 in British North America, ending in Illinois in the summer of 1968.

As I began, I thought I'd write down the titles of the stories I especially liked so I'd remember later which ones I wanted to talk about. Pretty soon it became clear it would be much easier to write down the few I wasn't super crazy about. Mind you, even the ones I didn't like weren't bad, they simply weren't my style (i.e. magical realism.)

So what did I love? "The Journey" by Marie Lu, in which a young Inuit woman's parents are killed by white invaders and she must flee with her sled and dogs to try and reach another village. "The Red Raven Ball" by Caroline Tung Richmond set in Washington D.C. during the Civil War and stars a daring girl determined to reveal a spy at a fancy ball thrown by her grandmother. "Pearls" by Beth Revis, in which a teenage girl is will be forced to marry the man who raped her, but instead leaves to begin a new life as a teacher in remote Wyoming Territory. "The Legendary Garrett Girls" by Y.S. Lee, the story of two bartending sisters in Alaska and what happens when renegade men decide to steal their business. "The Color of the Sky" by Elizabeth Wein, recounting the story of Bessie Coleman, the first black woman to get a pilot's license. And so on, and on. This is a really strong collection.

Some stories I kind of wish were novel-length. I would have loved to spend more time with Yakone, the Inuit woman in Alaska in the early 1700s. Or with brave Helen, leaving behind the men who want to control her and forging a new life as a teacher. Or Madeleine, the title character of Spotswood's story "Madeleine's Choice," who learns early how to make her way through an unfair world and I just want to know if she ends up being happy with her life.

I also learned a lot about American history from this collection. I didn't know about the lives of free people of color in the early 19th century, about the quadroon balls and the "arrangements" between white men and free black women that Spotswood wrote about in "Madeleine's Choice." I didn't know anything about Bessie Coleman either until reading Elizabeth Wein's story. Or the Black Panthers, which of course I'd heard of but never really read anything about. The author of the "Pulse of the Panthers," Kekla Magoon, is publishing an in-depth book about the history and legacy of the Black Panthers which I'm hoping is also a teen book so I can recommend it to my book group. There is so little historical fiction that takes places in the US, yet our history is so rich with surprising and adventurous stories.

I could go on at length about all the stories in this collection - there were great ones that I didn't even mention here. They are all worth reading, and you'll find much to admire about the brave, fierce, unstoppable young women that you'll meet.

Moral Disorder

Moral Disorder and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood (2006)

This collection of short stories follows one character from her childhood through adulthood. Born in the 1930s, Nell grew into a young women in the 50s and became involved with a married man who she later moved in with, settling down to have a family on a farm. The eleven stories are from different parts of Nell's life, and some are told in third person while others are in first person from Nell's point of view.

I started reading these stories occasionally between other books when I wanted a palate cleanser, and dipping in and out with long stretches of time in between meant that I realized embarrassingly late that the stories were all about one woman. (In my defense, her name isn't revealed in every story.) I had been feeling lukewarm about this collection, but once I realized it was all part of one big story, it really clicked for me. Suddenly, for instance, one story that had seemed boring was now recast in my mind as a lovely little vignette in the life of this person who I actually did know other things about.

The trajectory of Nell's life is sort of fascinating. She befriends a couple, Oona and Tig, and it becomes clear that their marriage is not great. It's a pretty open marriage and this point, and Oona is clearly pushing Nells towards Tig. So they begin a relationship and Tig moves to a farm, Nell eventually following. As their relationship gets more settled, Oona begins falling apart and Nell ultimately ends up sort of taking care of her.

My favorite was the title story, "Moral Disorder," in which Nell and Tig leave the farm they've been renting and buy their own. There is plenty of space for Tig's kids, and Nell begins gardening and they acquire lots of animals they didn't intend to get. This is new to all of them, and farm animals mean difficult and messy and violent things happen that you just need to accept. Meanwhile, their relationship is a bit strained because of Nell's desire to have a baby. I really liked everything about the details of this new life, which was a change for both of them. Farming was new, but their relationship also took on a permanence that it didn't have before. Of course Oona was still around since she is the kids' mother, but her role was changing. This story felt like the turning point in the book in a couple of ways - Nell and Tig's relationship really coming together, and my realization that the stories were all connected. I really liked it a lot from here on out!

But even some of the earlier stories were memorable. In "The Art of Cooking and Serving," eleven-year-old Nell is trying to help out at home while her mother is pregnant. She is diligently knitting a layette, and studying a book of homemaking advice. Once the baby is born, she is stuck caring for her younger sister, her mother lost in a seemingly-endless postpartum depression. In "The Headless Horseman," Nell works really hard on a Halloween costume that didn't quite work out (this was my life before I finally gave up on Halloween altogether.) I loved the description of her teachers in "My Last Duchess," all dressed in matching skirt suits with brooches on the left-hand lapels. The most fashionable was Miss Bessie, also the most sharp-witted with the highest expectations.

Although this wasn't my favorite Margaret Atwood book, the ultimate effect was to make me want to read more of Atwood's writing. I've fallen behind, not yet having read The Heart Goes Last, which came out last year. This October will see publication of The Hag-Seed, a retelling of The Tempest. I should definitely check it out, since I'll be reading, and watching a performance of, The Tempest later this year as part of my Bardathon Challenge.

Have you read this collection? Have you read The Heart Goes Last? What is your favorite work of Margaret Atwood?

The Thing Around Your Neck

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

Adichie is the author of Americanah, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Purple Hibiscus, as well as the TED talk turned mini-book We Should All Be Feminists. This collection of short stories was the only remaining book of hers I hadn't read, until I just devoured it in the course of two days on my vacation.

Each of the twelve stories has a pretty strong emotional impact, and in non-vacation circumstances I might have taken a bit of a break between each story. They were about families, lovers, immigrants new to America, or Nigerians living in their own country. In "The American Embassy" a woman whose child has died recently stands in a long line seeking asylum to the United States. "Jumping Monkey Hill" takes place at a writer's retreat in South Africa. In "The Arrangers of Marriage" a woman comes to the US to marry a Nigerian man, who immediately begins instructing her how to act more like an American. "Tomorrow Is Too Far" recounts a family tragedy in an almost eerie second person voice.

They were such distinct experiences that it's difficult to talk about the book as a whole, but I can say that all the way through it felt similar to reading other books by Adichie. Though these were only snippets compared to reading a novel, I felt thrust into the characters' lives and minds and surroundings in the same way I do in her novels. I don't know how she accomplished this in so few pages. They were not uplifting stories, and most left me feeling some level of despair for the characters, but somehow the experience was so colorful and full of feeling that reading it was still a positive experience.

Is Adichie even capable of writing anything that is subpar? It seems like even the best authors have one crappy book or story or something, but apparently she does not. I'd be annoyed at how unfairly perfect she is if I didn't love her writing so much.

This is the sixth book I've read for my TBR Pile Challenge, which means I only have four left for the year. I think my next choice will also be the last unread book from a favorite author, The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, and I'm hoping to read it in the next month or so to keep up my momentum for this challenge.

The Grownup

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (2015)

Gillian Flynn's standalone short story begins when the unnamed narrator had to give up her job of giving hand jobs because she had carpel tunnel syndrome. Luckily, the establishment she worked for, Spiritual Palms, also employed psychics. One day a desperate woman named Susan Burke comes in and the narrator goes a bit above and beyond to help with her family problems, but is soon in over her head.

I don't want to say too much about it, since it's just a short story so there's not a whole lot to it. The setup was great, and I really liked the narrator (and didn't even realize until I started writing this that I don't know her name.)

Late in the story there's a part where a character goes into a lengthy explanation that he simply didn't have time for, and which was a whole lot of telling and not showing. A friend's Goodreads review describes it as "verbal throw up." It felt like time stood still in the story to wait for the guy to explain what was happening, which was disappointing coming from a talent like Flynn.

However, I was pretty sucked in up until that time, and there were parts that seriously gave me the creeps. I love Gillian Flynn, and an imperfect story from her is better than some other authors' best works so this wasn't especially disappointing.

It also qualifies for Winter Bingo, because this book was a gift. I realize it's not an entire novel, but it is a stand-alone book and it's not like there are even prizes for this challenge (I don't think?) so I feel fine including it. Plus I just read Hild, which was approximately 4,000 pages long so I think the two balance each other out.

American Housewife

American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis (2016)

In this slim volume of short stories, domesticity comes a bit unglued. In "The Wainscoting War" a new tenant engages her neighbor in a battle over redecorating their shared hallway, told through a series of emails. "Hello! Welcome to Book Club" is an orientation to a new book club member, describing the many rules of book club and ultimately disclosing the dark purpose for her invitation. In "The Fitter" an insecure wife of a talented bra fitter tries to recover from an illness while quelling rumors about her marriage. The final story in the collection is "My Novel Is Brought To You By Tampax," in which an author supposed to be working on a novel spends most of her time drumming up publicity on social media, resulting in a harsh, creepy crackdown from her sponsor.

Several of the stories are written in second person, a few of which are basically lists of directives. My favorite of these is "How To Be a Grown-Ass Lady" which instructs the reader on everything from shopping to drinking responsibly. These instructional pieces are among the shorter of the collection, along with "Southern Lady Code" which is a list of things Southern ladies say along with translations of what they actually mean. These pieces are sharp and funny, but less memorable than the more traditionally-structured stories.

Of the longer, more fleshed-out stories, I quite liked "Dumpster Diving With the Stars," in which an author tries to get back in her game, publicity-wise anyhow, by appearing on a reality show. There she befriends a former Playboy playmate named Mitzy, as well as a colorful cast of other contestants who contribute to the story's wackiness. The idea of the show is to find or buy antiques that are worth much more than you paid; whoever scores the biggest difference is the winner. The author, however, is trying to drum up interest in her writing although she isn't producing anything new, partly out of fear of copying her best friend, a more-successful writer.

I also really enjoyed "My Novel Is Brought To You By Tampax," which is coincidentally also about a writer who isn't writing. She is, however, creating: she knows who her characters are and has created Twitter accounts for them, garnering thousands of followers. Her account manager at Tampax, though, is not satisfied and goes to more and more desperate means to keep tabs on the wayward writer and make sure she begins producing.

These stories are biting, funny, dark, and sometimes over-the-top. In some cases I thought they were a bit too over-the-top, such as in "The Wainscoting War," but even so I found something to enjoy in all of them. There are twelve stories in all, and the entire collection only fills 100 pages, so it is well-worth spending a little time with.

I haven't read anything quite like this collection. The closest books I can think to compare it to are Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple and Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson. It's as different from those two as they are from each other, but I think they may all appeal to the same kind of readers. I'm looking forward to hearing how this book is received once it's published in a few months.

American Housewife will be published in January 2016. I received my copy courtesy of the publisher via Edelweiss. I was not compensated for this review.

Stay Awake

Stay Awake by Dan Chaon (2012)

Have you ever read a really good book and several days later when you try to tell someone about it, you can't even remember what it was about? That's how I feel about Dan Chaon's book of short stories, Stay Awake. Granted, collections are a little tougher anyhow because there are so many different plots and characters, but all that has really stuck with me are the feelings they evoked.

Some bits and pieces I remember: a guy who is haunted by his former family who he wronged, and whose new young son is having terrible nightmares; a couple whose newborn has an extra head; a guy who keeps finding mysterious notes everywhere that seem to be trying to tell him something; children murdered by their parents. Two of the stories feature men who each lost a finger by falling off a ladder.

They aren't horror exactly, but they are dark and unsettling. There's always a feeling that something is not quite right and you can't see what it is, but it's just out of the corner of your eye and you'll know the full, terrible truth in just a moment. They are all completely unnerving.

Chaon's writing is vivid and precise, and he neatly conveys all of the most unpleasant feelings that exist in humanity in one convenient volume. As with all great short stories, a lot is conveyed in few pages, and in these stories whole lifetimes of guilt and fear can be read in a half hour. At first, I read one story every day or so. But then I read the last four in a day, and that was a bit too much weirdness and discomfort to be enjoyable. So, pace yourself.

Am I exaggerating? You be the judge. After all, October is the perfect time to delve into the strange and creepy. You might not enjoy these stories exactly, but you won't soon forget them.

Thunderstruck and Other Stories

Thunderstruck and Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (2014)

Elizabeth McCracken's long-awaited (at least by me) new book is a collection of nine short stories, culminating in the title story "Thunderstruck." The longest story in the collection, it is possibly also the most heartbreaking, which is saying a lot for this book. A family reacts to their daughter's troubled, wild behavior by packing up the entire family and going to France. Convinced that she's doing so much better and their troubles are over, at least for now, they are completely blindsided by tragedy.

"Property" surprised me when I began reading it and realized it wasn't the first time. I poked around and found that it was included in The Best American Short Stories 2011, and for good reason. A man named Stony plans to bring his German wife to Maine and they rent a house. But before they can leave Europe she dies suddenly and he arrives at the rental, eventually, alone. He dislikes the house intensely, boxing up its contents and storing them in favor of his own things. The tension, and contention, between Stony and the family who own the house is discomfiting.

In perhaps the most unusual and surprising story, "Some Terpsichore," a young woman becomes a singer to accompany a man who plays the saw. They form an act and also a relationship. Eventually, she is forced to face the truth about the man she fell in love with, and also about her singing. She still has the saw.

"Juliet" takes place in a public library, clearly recognizable as a library where I used to work (McCracken worked there as well but, alas, not at the same time as me.) A librarian recounts a violent crime committed by one library regular upon another (though not at the library), and expertly captures the way we all see only certain aspects of people's lives, but not others. It's a strange kind of voyeurism that we librarians practice.

I had a moment of sadness when I finished reading and realized that again, already, I have no more McCracken to read because I've read all her stuff. I'm actually tempted to go back and start from the beginning. Sometimes I find short stories tough to read, especially the longer ones, but I just enjoy her style so much that I don't care what it is. If she wrote poetry I'd read it, or a play, or  a western.

It's difficult to pinpoint what it is that grabs me in such a particular way. The stories are moving and surprising and poignant, the characters just quirky enough to be real, but the moments that give me the most satisfaction are when I come across descriptions like "It looked as though someone had taken a potting shed and turned it inside out" and "...a sunroom beyond seemed an asylum for insane and injured furniture." Or the observation, "People take their hands with them, no matter where they go." The way she writes just makes me see things differently and it can be jarring in the best possible way.

Each story contains so much that it's sort of shocking when you think about it. The night I read the first story in the collection, "Something Amazing," I put the book down and marveled at how much happened in those 16 pages. I felt like I knew these people, everything about their lives, what has already happened and what hasn't even happened yet, and how does that all get crammed into 16 pages and still have room for such clever, vivid language? It's like her stories are bigger on the inside. They are the TARDISes of stories.

I can't really say enough to recommend this collection. Elizabeth McCracken has long been one of my favorite authors and she continues to prove her skill here. Even if you think you don't like short stories, I suggest you give these ones a shot. They are excellent.

Nine Inches

Nine Inches by Tom Perrotta (2013)

Most of the stories in this collection are recognizable Perrotta, set as they are in schools and suburban neighborhoods, the star characters primarily parents, teachers, and teenagers. In "Backrub" an honor student, who was inexplicably turned down from every college he applied to, now delivers pizza and is being subjected to unwanted advances from a local cop. In "Grade My Teacher" a teacher confronts a student who wrote negative reviews of her online. A man sneaking into his neighbor's garage to use an air compressor on the sly finds more than he bargains for in "Kiddie Pool." A teenaged boy gets paid to take the SATs for other students in "The Test-Taker."

Unlike many short story collections it was easy to just move from one story to the next - maybe because they felt like they could have taken place in the same town to characters who all knew each other. Whatever the reason, instead of my usual habit of reading just one story at a time and then setting the book aside for a while, I plowed through the entire collection in less than a day.

In most collections there are a couple of stories that don't seem as good as the others, but each of the ten stories in Nine Inches deserved its place here and it would be tough to even pick favorites. Some of the stories were sad, filled with lost opportunities and missed connections, and in all of them I felt the same intimacy with the characters as usual in Perrotta's writing. As much as I don't like suburbia, I'm happy to dip into Tom Perrotta's version of it. I'm already looking forward to his next book.

Kiss Kiss

Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl (1959)

Each of the eleven stories making up this collection is more dark and strange than the last. A young man searching for lodgings is inexplicably drawn to a house with a suspiciously welcoming landlady. A widow is handed a letter from her recently-deceased husband suggesting that he may not be completely gone after all. An anxious woman whose husband has pushed her buttons too many times finally takes control of the situation. It doesn't do at all to try and describe these stories - I have to be deliberately vague because so many have surprise endings and I don't want to ruin them.

Some are dark in a creepy way, others just explore the more sly or greedy part of the characters' personalities (and they usually get their comeuppance.) Some contain elements of the supernatural, while others rely only on human nature to horrify. Dahl's style is clear, straightforward, and light but the content is none of those things. He provides just enough detail to set the stage and what he doesn't say is often just as important as what he does.

I wouldn't ever have know about this collection if it weren't for Simon Savidge's review. I've grown more interested in short stories recently and last week when I was looking for some, this was luckily available at my library. Our edition has this fantastic old-school cover that I just love. Every story in this collection was satisfying, and I positively burnt through it.

Tenth of December

Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013)

This short story collection has been greatly lauded since it was published earlier this year. I try not to be drawn in by hype and almost skipped it, but remembered how much I enjoyed Saunders' book of essays The Braindead Megaphone. Indeed, I flew through this little book in a couple of days of a busy weekend. It's short but it's so easy to get sucked into his stories so I was through the book before I knew it.

The narrative voices are just amazingly real and clever, and I think that's what propelled me through this collection so quickly. It's hard to describe, but it's very conversational and entertaining and wonderfully fun.

One aspect of his essay collection that had struck me was just how creative and original his writing is, and that's true here as well. As real as the voices and characters are, there are some unexpected elements to some of the stories. "Escape from Spiderhead", which I had already read in The Best American Short Stories 2011, is a piece of science fiction but others have just elements of something that is a bit different, or off.

I think my favorite story was "The Semplica Girl Diaries," which takes place in a world that we're familiar with to a family struggling to keep up with their wealthy neighbors. But one common way to outwardly display wealth is through yard displays of something called SGs. SGs turn out to be domestic workers, immigrants from places like the Philippines and Somalia, who are strung up in arrangements in one's yard. It's justified in the same way we justify hiring women from these countries to clean our houses - their lives are better here, they really need the money to send home to their families, etc. It's a great idea for the story, but what makes it such a standout is that it's written as diary entries from the man who hires them. His struggles as a provider and a father made me sympathize with him and laugh at him at the same time.

It's difficult to write about short story collections because there are so many different stories and characters so you can't really summarize. I will say that I liked every single story in Tenth of December and that they were all very different from each other. Saunders is able to evoke a wide array of emotions in his writing, but through it all is his crazy and wonderful brand of humor. Highly recommended!