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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Mix of good and mid short stories, but fun regardless.
What an interesting and imaginative mind this author must have! I read Tender is the Flesh last year and I absolutely loved it, in my top three last year for sure. This was very different from that one, mostly because it is 19 short (some very short) stories, similar in horror theme, but not super cohesive as a collection, which is fine, they don't have to be. Some were five star stories and come where 1 star stories, which is why I'm giving the average rating of three stars. The audio narration is great, several different narrators are used which keeps it fun and helps separate the stories if you missed the title change. It's also very short for being 19 stories, so I say give it a shot if you like this author, you won't love them all, but I'm sure you'll find a couple you enjoy.
Some of the stories are okay some.wrte really boring. Maybe something gets lost in translation
dark
fast-paced
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Agustina Bazterrica, I love you to pieces, but this was kinda meh. This definitely suffers from me reading this book after Tender Is The Flesh and The Unworthy, both of which I absolutely loved and changed me on a molecular level. Reading Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird after Tender Is The Flesh and The Unworthy feels like eating a delicious meal and dessert, and then being offered a charcuterie board as an appetizer. Like, I don’t hate the charcuterie board, but it feels like a cold open for the much cooler shit that I just ate.
Don’t get me wrong, these stories are all very Agustina Bazterrica-esque, but most of these stories were hard to follow and vibe-heavy. My personal favorites were Roberto, Candy Pink, A Hole Hides a House, Mary Carminum, and The Solitary Ones.
Don’t get me wrong, these stories are all very Agustina Bazterrica-esque, but most of these stories were hard to follow and vibe-heavy. My personal favorites were Roberto, Candy Pink, A Hole Hides a House, Mary Carminum, and The Solitary Ones.
challenging
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A hit-or-mid kind of book. Most of the stories were fine but not memorable and most of them made me sad or a bit angry, rather than invoking an actual sense of horror. The themes (check the content warnings for those!) are pretty consistent throughout the collection, but the issue quickly becomes that the variation between approaches isn't always there and the individual short stories often start blurring one into the other.
That said, I did really like a handful of them! Dishwasher wasn't much of a horror piece to me, but it was really sad in a way that felt tangible and I still think about bits of it here and there. Teicher vs. Nietzsche is a bit heavy-handed about its central "mystery", but I thought it was fun and original-ish! The Dead and Elena-Marie Sandoz were genuinely unsettling and one of the few stories in the collection that gave me a proper shiver or two. Mary Carminum was predictable and heavy-handed, but still found it pretty entertaining. And No Tears and The Solitary Ones both were neat in different ways up until the last few paragraphs (in The Solitary Ones it's really the last sentence), which had me disappointed.
A lot of the stories felt a little undercooked and like a first draft after a shower thought, rather than fully fleshed-out stories (I would've loved to like Hell but it read a lot like convoluted filler that could've maybe used another editing pass or two) and while some of the stories are just the right amount of snappy short (The Solitary Ones did it best, in my opinion), a lot of them manage to either feel bloated still or too short to have a proper impact. I also wasn't a huge fan of how prescriptive and heavy-handed the approach to the horror was, I think psychological horror reads best when it's subtle and we're left to our own devices to project our fears into it.
I'm also unsure if reading the stories in the original Spanish version would've made a difference (the translation reads fine but it never quite replaces the original, right?) and if presented with the chance, I think I might want to try.
Not sure if I would recommend getting the book at full retail price unless you're already a fan of Bazterrica's style but if you come across it on clearance or at the public library and feel a little like reading about a decaying reality, the horrors of being afab in the patriarchy and the fear of sexual violence, and don't mind not being in it to root for your protagonists… why not? I don't think any of the stories is longer than 10 pages, or much longer than that. If you're in the mental headspace for it, they're an easy enough read.
That said, I did really like a handful of them! Dishwasher wasn't much of a horror piece to me, but it was really sad in a way that felt tangible and I still think about bits of it here and there. Teicher vs. Nietzsche is a bit heavy-handed about its central "mystery", but I thought it was fun and original-ish! The Dead and Elena-Marie Sandoz were genuinely unsettling and one of the few stories in the collection that gave me a proper shiver or two. Mary Carminum was predictable and heavy-handed, but still found it pretty entertaining. And No Tears and The Solitary Ones both were neat in different ways up until the last few paragraphs (in The Solitary Ones it's really the last sentence), which had me disappointed.
A lot of the stories felt a little undercooked and like a first draft after a shower thought, rather than fully fleshed-out stories (I would've loved to like Hell but it read a lot like convoluted filler that could've maybe used another editing pass or two) and while some of the stories are just the right amount of snappy short (The Solitary Ones did it best, in my opinion), a lot of them manage to either feel bloated still or too short to have a proper impact. I also wasn't a huge fan of how prescriptive and heavy-handed the approach to the horror was, I think psychological horror reads best when it's subtle and we're left to our own devices to project our fears into it.
I'm also unsure if reading the stories in the original Spanish version would've made a difference (the translation reads fine but it never quite replaces the original, right?) and if presented with the chance, I think I might want to try.
Not sure if I would recommend getting the book at full retail price unless you're already a fan of Bazterrica's style but if you come across it on clearance or at the public library and feel a little like reading about a decaying reality, the horrors of being afab in the patriarchy and the fear of sexual violence, and don't mind not being in it to root for your protagonists… why not? I don't think any of the stories is longer than 10 pages, or much longer than that. If you're in the mental headspace for it, they're an easy enough read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis