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elwirax's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Among the thorns - 3/5
How to bring someone back from the dead- 3/5
Alice: a fantasia- 2/5
Phosphorus- 3/5
Ballroom Blitz- 1/5
Serpents- 2.5/5
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga- 3/5
Rats- 2/5
Lost in the Supermarket- 2.5/5
Swimming- 2/5
Lily Glass- 2/5
The Revenant- 1/5
Burning Girls- 4/5
I enjoyed the exploration of themes in these short stories (anti-semitism, revenge, capitalism and exploitation, mental illness, self-destruction, oppression and trauma). However, the execution of many just didn't interest me despite being well written. Burning Girls, Among Thorns, Phosphorus and Emma Goldman were by far my favourite short stories in this collection where I felt the themes were the strongest. Overall, an interesting collection based loosely on well know fairy-tales, perhaps just not for me.
How to bring someone back from the dead- 3/5
Alice: a fantasia- 2/5
Phosphorus- 3/5
Ballroom Blitz- 1/5
Serpents- 2.5/5
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga- 3/5
Rats- 2/5
Lost in the Supermarket- 2.5/5
Swimming- 2/5
Lily Glass- 2/5
The Revenant- 1/5
Burning Girls- 4/5
I enjoyed the exploration of themes in these short stories (anti-semitism, revenge, capitalism and exploitation, mental illness, self-destruction, oppression and trauma). However, the execution of many just didn't interest me despite being well written. Burning Girls, Among Thorns, Phosphorus and Emma Goldman were by far my favourite short stories in this collection where I felt the themes were the strongest. Overall, an interesting collection based loosely on well know fairy-tales, perhaps just not for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Antisemitism
Moderate: Violence, Blood, Child death, and Death of parent
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Sexual content, and Confinement
jmcordero's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Blood, Body horror, Chronic illness, Confinement, Vomit, Violence, Terminal illness, and Death of parent
Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Addiction, Torture, Sexual content, Sexism, Rape, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Pregnancy, Pedophilia, Murder, Misogyny, Mental illness, Grief, Drug use, Drug abuse, and Child death
Minor: Xenophobia and War
mirichasha's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes
Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for the audiobook Advanced Reader’s Copy, which I received for free in exchange for an honest review.
The forward, by Jane Yolen, sold me completely on this book. Now that I’ve read the book, I agree wholeheartedly, and am blown away by the haunting beauty of so many of these stories.
Our protagonists, in true fairytale fashion (but perhaps better than I’ve ever seen it) are pushed by circumstance and historical context and prejudice and sometimes cruelty, into situations where they seem to have no choices left. It’s then that the fantastical elements of the stories come in. Through magic - sometimes ugly and grotesque magic and always with a cost – our characters retain their agency and fight back, even though they rarely win a happy ending. Indeed, these stories don’t center around the concept of happy endings, or endings, or happiness. When revenge is sought and even found, it does not end in total absolution and a clean-cut ending. At the beginning of “Rats,” Schanoes notes that all stories lie in order to wrap up cleanly, in order to have a beginning middle and end, and she plays with this truth as she writes. These stories are truer to life than a story fairly ending with, “the end,” and settle in a messier land of quiet, too-young deaths after final victories, the hope of resettling in a new place to start again after loss, the idea that even knowing the worse is coming, there will still be good on its way, and so there may be enough hope left to keep trying.
Some of these stories will stay with me for a long time, with particular quotes still ringing in my head. Some I didn’t quite understand, or read through without particularly connecting to, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the collection as a whole. I’ll write individually about each story (I have listened to the audiobook twice – first just to enjoy it, and then to guide my review, remember the names of the stories, and see if I understood anything differently the second time around.)
My favorite story was “The Revenant.” (Trigger warning for grooming of and then sexual relationship/assault of a sixteen-year-old girl by a middle aged man) The quote, "Trauma is suffering that will not stay in its temporal position,” will stay with me, as well as the surrounding paragraphs and the rest of this reflective, painful story. The way this talks about messy trauma, and is written directly addressing abusive men, knowing they won’t listen or change. It ends without true healing or vindication, and therefore stays real and relatable, even if it is human nature to yearn for the fantasy of that one perfect act of revenge or truth or justice achieved, the book closed. This story sits with you in the midst of the pain from a place lighter than it is dark, more than it leads you through to a final promised land.
My second favorite was, “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga,” which held so much, as Yolen stated in her introduction - a biography and an autobiography and a fairytale and a history and a political manifesto all wrapped into one fable. A favorite quote was, “The means do become the ends, because there is no end. There are just ongoing moments.”
“Among the Thorns,” the first story, was the exact kind of Jewish fairytale I was hoping to find in another book I read recently. I would love a second collection of stories with more of this fashion: Jewish fairytale retellings set in historical times, with antisemitism as one of the evils lurking in the woods, the divine feminine as a morally gray figure bringing the morality and powerful absence of the more traditional masculine God into question. I appreciated the queer background character in this very first story, which let me know I was welcome within these pages.
“Phosphorus” is a horror story where the fantastical, magical element is a small balm of relief set across the horror of the true historical context of capitalism, greed and cruelty and disregard of human life.
The title story, “Burning Girls,” reminds me of Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon (and like it, has a queer main character). It felt both familiar and new with the ill-met grasp at agency that the Lilith demon represents for this family. This brought a new lens to stories I’ve read about so many times before – pogroms, emigration to America, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Indeed, I think a quintessential experience of book-loving-Jewish-girls is reading narrative after narrative that touches on that one fateful night at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory – however tragic it was, it feels like as much a part of my childhood as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White.
Speaking of Snow White, “Lily Glass” was a beautiful if tragic and toxic retelling of Snow White, where the young stepmother who has smothered her childhood of poverty and illness and changed her Jewish name to one more fitting for her tenuous new life as a Hollywood star, falls more for her troubled adult stepdaughter than her powerful co-star and new husband, unravelling the false self she has created and become.
The other stories all had an interesting ambience and writing style but for one reason or another didn’t make my favorites list. “Ballroom Blitz” was interesting and well-written but didn’t speak to me as much personally. It did remind me a bit of Julie and the Phantoms and Caleb’s club, which I was not expecting to be thinking about while reading this collection. “Serpents” was so fascinating but also made almost no sense to me, which might have been the intention. Or maybe it’s about adolescence and growing into a woman, a serpent? I could not tell you. I felt like I was an inch away from fully grasping “Lost in the Supermarket” and “Swimming,” which both transform the real horror of gentrification and late capitalism into exaggerated tales of living buildings our protagonists are, or are afraid of becoming, trapped in. I didn’t realize who “Rats” was about until I read other reviews, and it makes more sense to me now (and I loved its intro about fairytales repeating themselves). I did not quite understand “How To Bring Someone Back from the Dead”, or “Alice: A Fantasia,” especially the second half of the latter.
The audiobook was great. Most of the time, it felt like the exact right way to be reading the stories, and I was truly in the stories rather than noticing that someone was reading it to me. I do think this is the kind of book I’d like to have both a text and audio version of, as some stories, most especially “The Revenant,” I’d probably prefer to read as text, at least have the option to do so. I did speed up the audiobook to listen, but that is normal for me.
I am more of a library user (and Kindle deals hunter) than a book purchaser in general, but I’m definitely buying a copy of this as I know I will want to reread many of these stories over and over.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for the audiobook Advanced Reader’s Copy, which I received for free in exchange for an honest review.
The forward, by Jane Yolen, sold me completely on this book. Now that I’ve read the book, I agree wholeheartedly, and am blown away by the haunting beauty of so many of these stories.
Our protagonists, in true fairytale fashion (but perhaps better than I’ve ever seen it) are pushed by circumstance and historical context and prejudice and sometimes cruelty, into situations where they seem to have no choices left. It’s then that the fantastical elements of the stories come in. Through magic - sometimes ugly and grotesque magic and always with a cost – our characters retain their agency and fight back, even though they rarely win a happy ending. Indeed, these stories don’t center around the concept of happy endings, or endings, or happiness. When revenge is sought and even found, it does not end in total absolution and a clean-cut ending. At the beginning of “Rats,” Schanoes notes that all stories lie in order to wrap up cleanly, in order to have a beginning middle and end, and she plays with this truth as she writes. These stories are truer to life than a story fairly ending with, “the end,” and settle in a messier land of quiet, too-young deaths after final victories, the hope of resettling in a new place to start again after loss, the idea that even knowing the worse is coming, there will still be good on its way, and so there may be enough hope left to keep trying.
Some of these stories will stay with me for a long time, with particular quotes still ringing in my head. Some I didn’t quite understand, or read through without particularly connecting to, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the collection as a whole. I’ll write individually about each story (I have listened to the audiobook twice – first just to enjoy it, and then to guide my review, remember the names of the stories, and see if I understood anything differently the second time around.)
My favorite story was “The Revenant.” (Trigger warning for grooming of and then sexual relationship/assault of a sixteen-year-old girl by a middle aged man) The quote, "Trauma is suffering that will not stay in its temporal position,” will stay with me, as well as the surrounding paragraphs and the rest of this reflective, painful story. The way this talks about messy trauma, and is written directly addressing abusive men, knowing they won’t listen or change. It ends without true healing or vindication, and therefore stays real and relatable, even if it is human nature to yearn for the fantasy of that one perfect act of revenge or truth or justice achieved, the book closed. This story sits with you in the midst of the pain from a place lighter than it is dark, more than it leads you through to a final promised land.
My second favorite was, “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga,” which held so much, as Yolen stated in her introduction - a biography and an autobiography and a fairytale and a history and a political manifesto all wrapped into one fable. A favorite quote was, “The means do become the ends, because there is no end. There are just ongoing moments.”
“Among the Thorns,” the first story, was the exact kind of Jewish fairytale I was hoping to find in another book I read recently. I would love a second collection of stories with more of this fashion: Jewish fairytale retellings set in historical times, with antisemitism as one of the evils lurking in the woods, the divine feminine as a morally gray figure bringing the morality and powerful absence of the more traditional masculine God into question. I appreciated the queer background character in this very first story, which let me know I was welcome within these pages.
“Phosphorus” is a horror story where the fantastical, magical element is a small balm of relief set across the horror of the true historical context of capitalism, greed and cruelty and disregard of human life.
The title story, “Burning Girls,” reminds me of Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon (and like it, has a queer main character). It felt both familiar and new with the ill-met grasp at agency that the Lilith demon represents for this family. This brought a new lens to stories I’ve read about so many times before – pogroms, emigration to America, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Indeed, I think a quintessential experience of book-loving-Jewish-girls is reading narrative after narrative that touches on that one fateful night at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory – however tragic it was, it feels like as much a part of my childhood as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White.
Speaking of Snow White, “Lily Glass” was a beautiful if tragic and toxic retelling of Snow White, where the young stepmother who has smothered her childhood of poverty and illness and changed her Jewish name to one more fitting for her tenuous new life as a Hollywood star, falls more for her troubled adult stepdaughter than her powerful co-star and new husband, unravelling the false self she has created and become.
The other stories all had an interesting ambience and writing style but for one reason or another didn’t make my favorites list. “Ballroom Blitz” was interesting and well-written but didn’t speak to me as much personally. It did remind me a bit of Julie and the Phantoms and Caleb’s club, which I was not expecting to be thinking about while reading this collection. “Serpents” was so fascinating but also made almost no sense to me, which might have been the intention. Or maybe it’s about adolescence and growing into a woman, a serpent? I could not tell you. I felt like I was an inch away from fully grasping “Lost in the Supermarket” and “Swimming,” which both transform the real horror of gentrification and late capitalism into exaggerated tales of living buildings our protagonists are, or are afraid of becoming, trapped in. I didn’t realize who “Rats” was about until I read other reviews, and it makes more sense to me now (and I loved its intro about fairytales repeating themselves). I did not quite understand “How To Bring Someone Back from the Dead”, or “Alice: A Fantasia,” especially the second half of the latter.
The audiobook was great. Most of the time, it felt like the exact right way to be reading the stories, and I was truly in the stories rather than noticing that someone was reading it to me. I do think this is the kind of book I’d like to have both a text and audio version of, as some stories, most especially “The Revenant,” I’d probably prefer to read as text, at least have the option to do so. I did speed up the audiobook to listen, but that is normal for me.
I am more of a library user (and Kindle deals hunter) than a book purchaser in general, but I’m definitely buying a copy of this as I know I will want to reread many of these stories over and over.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Addiction, Antisemitism, Blood, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Mental illness, Religious bigotry, and Terminal illness
Minor: Abortion, Confinement, Death of parent, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Gore, Homophobia, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Violence, Vomit, and Xenophobia
Specific trigger warning for a deep reflection on the trauma of child sexual assault/a sexual"relationship" a 16 year old girl had with a middle aged married man (reflecting from years later) in the story, "The Revenant"
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