The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Was that the point of suffering: to understand, in some way, what you still had? To clarify it, to rip the stars from the sky and hold them in the hand like diamonds‒to darken all the rest but the most glittering, glad memories? Was that the way to live a sunny life?”- The Unfinished World, Amber Sparks

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks’s dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In “The Cemetery for Lost Faces,” two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, “The Unfinished World,” unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family. Sparks’s stories—populated with sculptors, librarians, astronauts, and warriors—form a veritable cabinet of curiosities. Mythical, bizarre, and deeply moving, The Unfinished World and Other Stories heralds the arrival of a major writer and illuminates the search for a brief encounter with the extraordinary.

Keeping up with my theme of short stories, we have The Unfinished World by Amber Sparks. Like I mentioned in my By Light We Knew Our Names review, my favorite vehicle for magical realism is the short story. I find that it's much easier for me to swallow tastes of magic as opposed to whole novels draped in heavy metaphorical meanings that usually come with the territory. 

There is no doubt in my mind that Sparks is wonderful at what she does. Each story is masterfully written, with inventive characters and it was easy for her to lure me into the bite-sized worlds she had created. And unlike the above mentioned Anne Valente, Sparks refreshingly keeps her messages concealed enough from the stories that they don't overwhelm them, with a few exceptions like the first story, the Space Janitor, which is a pretty blunt-faced commentary on the way women are treated. Blessedly, it's a short one. 

My favorite story in the collection was The Cemetery for Lost Faces, because I really liked the characters and the plot and the idea behind it. But that's just me, I like reading about taxidermy, heck, one of the stories I'm fiddling around with has a taxidermist main character. I also liked Thirteen Ways to Destroy a Painting, which was managed to be both funny and touching at the same time. 

One of the problems I found with The Unfinished World, though, is that, while it has only been two days since I've read it, I have a hard time remembering some of the stories. There's a lot in this collection, and a the majority of them work extremely well and I can remember many of their plot lines, but I have a hard time putting title to plot. Just a minor thing. 

My other issue with The Unfinished World is that I was underwhelmed by the titular novella. I really liked the idea behind it and the story of both Set and Inge's family, but it didn't grab me the way her shorter works did. I think Sparks' brevity is her biggest strength and she would do well to stick to writing almost flash fiction length stories. 

Another thing, I often felt a strange detachment towards this collection. I was enjoying it and I wanted to read it, but it didn't connect with me the way I like my books to. Which is a shame, because I think stories in The Unfinished World will stick with me for a long time because they work very well considering my usual taste in short stories. 

This should be one of my favorite short story collections, and because it's such a technical masterpiece. There is no character that does not fit in the context of the story, no word out of place, no plot that is not skillfully plotted out, and I was going to give it a 9 because of Sparks' superb skills. And yet, my lack of connection I felt while reading, even when I knew I should love it, makes me bump to down a half a point. 

8.5-9 out of 10

By Light We Knew Our Names by Anne Valente Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“We met among tall pines, separate blood, divided by arms and hands and hearts and lungs that all held the same wounds...”- By Light We Knew Our Names, Anne Valente

From ghosts to pink dolphins to a fight club of young women who practice beneath the Alaskan aurora borealis, By Light We Knew Our Names examines the beauty and heartbreak of the world we live in. Across thirteen stories, this collection explores the thin border between magic and grief.

My first proper book review of 2018! I haven't really been in the reading mood since, well, the start of the year, but I do have a lot of books that I am collecting to read, including quite a few new releases. 

Anyway, By Light We Knew Our Names is a collection of short stories, which I've been in the mood for lately. I was attracted to it because I loved the cover and I've been in the mood for a little magical realism lately, and I find that collections of short stories are the best if I want my thirst for magical realism sated. While I often find full-length magical realism novels hard to get through- which is why I've avoided books like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Like Water For Chocolate- short stories are an easy to read taste of magic, which is what drew me to this collection.

And it's a good solid collection. I mean, it is definitely a debut collection, with the messages behind each story a bit more sledgehammer in approach than I would have liked them being. The meanings behind each story were fairly obvious, which is nice but it is a little atypical of the genre. To me, the biggest appeal of magical realism is how much the mystical aspects cloak the meaning of the story, forcing the reader to come to his own conclusions about what the author thinks vs what the reader thinks the story means. In this, the meanings were fairly obvious, and all of them had to do with the same two subjects- loss and growing up- played over and over again. 

But Valente is a really talented writer. I especially loved the stories where she wrote in first person plural- Dear Amelia, Until Our Shadows Claim Us, and a bit of Everything That Was Ours. Besides those stories, I also really liked Latchkey, Terrible Angels, Minivan, and If Everything Fell Silent, Even Sirens. But my absolute favorite story in the collection was Not For Ghosts or Daffodils. I just loved the language and the characters in that story. I also need to mention that the last story, Mollusk, Membrane, Human Heart has such a gut wrenching conclusion that it was almost hard for me to read. 

There were a few misses, though. I found the title story, By Light We Knew Our Names, to be the biggest one. It was a cool idea, but wasn't that great in execution, and it was hard for me to like any of the characters. A Very Compassionate Baby was another miss- it made me think of that Edward Gorey short story about the horrible baby, though. Other than that, there were a few stories that didn't really do much for me, like To A Place Where We Take Flight, which I wanted to like more than I did, as well as A Taste of Tea, which had the same problem. 

Like with many short stories, I find that the best part is the title. I adore the titles of these stories, they're like one line poems. My favorites are probably Until Our Shadows Claim Us, Not For Ghosts or Daffodils, and Everything That Was Ours, as well as the title story. 

I do wish that there was a bit more of the arctic feel the cover promised. I love winter-y stories around this time of year (big surprise).

So, in the end this is a fine collection of short stories. I did like more of them than I didn't like, but at the same time the stories aren't as memorable as other short story collections I've read, and the titles of the stories are often better than the actual content. Still, there weren't any stories I hated outright. I'd recommend it.

8 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

Snow in May by Kseniya Melnik

Shot-Blue by Jesse Ruddock Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“It's a kind of death when you don't go home the same.”- Shot-Blue, Jesse Ruddock

Rachel is a young single mother living with her son, Tristan, on a lake that borders the unchannelled north – remote, nearly inhospitable. She does what she has to do to keep them alive. But soon, and unexpectedly, Tristan will have to live alone, his youth unprotected and rough. The wild, open place that is all he knows will be overrun by strangers – strangers inhabiting the lodge that has replaced his home, strangers who make him fight, talk, and even love, when he doesn't want to. Ravenous and unrelenting, Shot-Blue is a book of first love and first loss.

There are three things that matter in books: plot, characters, and writing. These three things aren't weighted equally, however, as some people, myself included, prefer characters over plot, others like the opposite, but the most important thing is the writing. In Shot-Blue, Ruddock decides to cut out the whole plot and characters part almost entirely and focus purely on the writing.

And that is both this book's biggest asset and also its downfall. Because the writing is, without a doubt, beautiful and is really the best part of the novel because Ruddock seems to have little interest in both fleshing out her characters beyond their physical attributes and doing something with the plot. This is not so much an issue in the first part of the story, also known as Book One, but in Book Two, Ruddock's lack of talent in both the plot and character aspect of writing becomes painfully apparent, and that beautiful, dreamlike writing quickly grows tiring. In that, I am reminded of books like The Night Circus, another book that prioritized writing above all and as that book progressed, it quickly became apparent that the writing was all the talent Morgenstern possessed. 

What sets Shot-Blue apart from The Night Circus, though, is the ambition behind this book. It proclaims to be a book about loneliness vs being alone and first loss and love, and it ends up drowning in its own pretension. By making it so ambiguous and so literary, it ends up really being about nothing except how smart Ruddock is for writing this. What she's missing is that there's a fine line between beautiful ambiguity and beautiful nothingness and this book crosses it. 

I see a lot of comparisons to Emma Donoghue's Room, but the book I thought of the most while reading Shot-Blue was actually The Road. Both have a similar premise, except the father in The Road is switched to a mother, but The Road is the far superior novel because it had a concrete plot as well as characters. By the end of the novel, I found myself deeply caring for both the boy and his father, whereas by the end of this book I couldn't bring myself to feel anything for any of the characters, or even seeing the point to most of them. The only non-superfluous characters in this novel were Tristan and Rachel.

I was also confused somewhat as to when the book was supposed to take place. All the characters spoke like they were from a time long ago, had names that were odd and somewhat futuristic-seeming, and every so often they would drop a modern slang word like when Tomasin exclaimed "oh, sick!". That just made the book seem muddy and confused.

So, do I recommend Shot-Blue? To be honest, no I don't. I mean, if you love dreamy literary nonsense, sure, go for it. I don't see Jesse Ruddock really going anyplace far as a writer unless she drops her pretensions, but I'd be curious about the follow up novel. In my opinion, though, this book should have ended at the first part.

5.5 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Room by Emma Donoghue

Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka

Grief Is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

By Light We Knew Our Names by Anne Valente

Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project.”- Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.

In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

This will probably be the shortest review in the history of reviews, because, as is often the case for books I love, it's hard to write about them. Books I hate can get lengthy reviews that involve copious nit-picking and snark, but books I love get shorter and more serious reviews. Normally, I would have started out with a story about Ted Hughes just to set the mood, so to speak, but that now seems far too light-hearted for this book's heavy, heavy subject matter.

There is little to say about this book. I get the sense that reading it is a deeply personal experience, which is why if you haven't, get it now. It's one of those books that screams future classic. I am tempted to buy a bunch and scatter them about, donating them to places like Goodwill or used book stores. Even the cover (the UK cover also) is very much the kind of cover books in the classic canon usually have, and so is the font. As a whole, this book was hugely impactful, in a way that is hard to describe.

I don't know if it will ever make my favorite books of all time or even my favorite books of 2017 list, but I'm still glad I read this. It was a quick read, because of the shortness of the book and the poem-y prose it was written in. This is obviously a 9 book, no doubt about it. It was written too skillfully to be anything but. I liked Crow, and his jet-black sense of humor greatly appealed to me. I am mostly unfamiliar with Hughes' work, and I am tempted to read more of Hughes now after reading this book. I've always liked poetry, and any book that gives me an excuse to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon reading poetry is a good book in my opinion. And I like crows, too. Most don't, but I've always had a soft spot for them. They are what they are, and I admire them for their honesty.

This book portrays grief in its rawest, most ugly state. I appreciate that. I didn't cry, but that's just me being me. I wanted too, though, after reading the last lines. When I was putting this book on my shelf after reading, I noticed that on my alphabetized shelf that this book (since the author's last name is Porter) would have to sit next to The Bell Jar. The Dad might not like that too much, but I do.

9 out of 10