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