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erikbergstrom's review
5.0
I came into this collection with an admiration for Mauro's story, "Sun Dogs", from Shadows and Tall Trees 7. I enjoyed many of the stories that were new to me, all of them in my wheelhouse of realism with a magical or liminal touch. The new favorites I came away with were "The Pain-Eater's Daughter" and "Looking for Laika". I thought Mauro's voice was strongest in these stories, which touch on the cords of hope and pain of family and how they cross over each other.
Where many writers are "tellers", Laura Mauro knows there's a more powerful experience when the writer & reader work in tandem to bring a story to life. She is an expert at the "iceberg", building such deep & rich backstories but only giving us the tip, and trusting us as the reader to build stories in our own minds and live with them long after reading.
Where many writers are "tellers", Laura Mauro knows there's a more powerful experience when the writer & reader work in tandem to bring a story to life. She is an expert at the "iceberg", building such deep & rich backstories but only giving us the tip, and trusting us as the reader to build stories in our own minds and live with them long after reading.
brujitas's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
ange1ina's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
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? It's complicated
5.0
incredibly poignant, gut-wrenchingly sad, and endlessly beautiful
aoutramafalda's review against another edition
4.5
- "Sun Dogs" 4.5*
- "Obsidian" 4*
- "Red Rabbit" 3*
- "Letters from Elodie" 5*
- "The Grey Men" 4*
- "Ptichka" 3.5*
- "When Charlie Sleeps" 3*
- "In the City of Bones" 4.5*
- "The Looking Glass Girl" 4.5*
- "In the Marrow" 4*
- "Looking for Laika " 5*
- "Strange as Angels" 4*
- "The Pain-Eater’s Daughter" 4*
"Sun Dogs"
"and a framed cross-stitch on the wall: "Failure to Prepare Is Preparing to Fail." Pastel colours, delicate bluebell border; a portent of doom, handcrafted with love.'"
"It was as though after a life spent preparing fastidiously for a future that might never come, I had finally learned to absorb the present; you had taught me, somehow, that the sum total of my existence could not be pared down to numbers on a spreadsheet"
"Everything you were to me had been pieced together; you were a loose-stitched patchwork of intuition, of little stories and guesswork. And I loved you, somehow, despite your insubstantiality; you cast no shadow, left no footprints, but the warmth of your body and the salt taste of your skin mattered far more. I wrapped my arms around you, the curve of your skull delicate beneath my chin. Your hair smelled like gasoline. I wondered where you'd been. "I see you, June," I said, after a time. "I believe you.""
"We had no plan, no destination, and perhaps we would fail, but for now we would run, and it seemed to me - breathless, exhilarated - that nothing in my life had been as pure, as perfect as this singular moment of freedom."
"Red Rabbit"
"Look at us, (...) Three Alices, following the rabbit down the hole."
"Letters from Elodie"
"And in the dark, a black-eyed angel; a perfect creature for whom binary notions of sex seemed quaint and inadequate. Strange, that someone so straight should wear queer so well."
"Elodi was a forest fire, burning through men, consuming hearts and leaving them in ashes, but it was never about love, or sex. She was Narcissus, and she beheld her own reflection in the eyes of her lovers."
"I'd like alone in the dark at 3 am listening to her messages over and over, revelling in her vulnerability. I'd run her entrails gently through my fingers (...) I'd savour the anger and the loneliness in her voice, feel a warm thrill in my heart at every barely suppressed sob. (...) She gave me the means to destroy her and trusted that I would never do it. That's all love is, when you strip it down to the bare bones. A loaded gun to the temple with someone else's finger on the trigger."
"I'd listened to her messages enough times that I remembered entire monologues by heart, could quite her the way other people quoted beloved films."
"Cold water rushed to embrace me. I let it take my weight, cradling my skull, gentle as a lover. Filling my mouth and ears so that I might taste her, so that I might hear her. Her words carried on the current as clear and as eerie as whale song. Her voice in the water. Elodie's last letter."
"No signs of a life. As though she had only ever been visiting."
"I'de looked inside of her and seen nothing at all but bones couched in black rot; her magpie soul, pieced together out of the fragments she stole from other people, other lives, a ransom note assembled from newsprint. I could have destroyed her, if I'd wanted to. I could have ruined her. I could have."
"The Grey Men"
"But beneath it all, Adam sensed a cold, swirling undercurrent of real dread. He wanted to capture that feeling, to put it in a jar and hold it close to his chest. To feel the panicked flutter of a hundred frightened hearts and pretend it was his own."
"I know what it's like to be lost, (...) To be lost in the fog with no way out. I know how that feels. It feels like being dead must feel. It feels like nothing."
"Ptichka"
"She deletes her search history before she leaves. I'ts impossible to know who's watching, and it's better to be paranoid than stupid. People like her have been arrested for much less."
"There is salvation only for those who can afford to pay for it."
"In the City of Bones"
"Walls filled with people, with noise, with perpetual motion. The doorways and corridors which taught me object permanence, that people continue to exist even when you cannot see them. That the places you leave behind are not quietly swallowed by the world."
"Someday, when I am dead, someone will open this drawer and find these little scraps of praise, these paper ghosts, like transmissions heard once and never again."
"You live like islands out here, (...) Scattered up and down like there's miles of ocean between you and the rest of the world."
"I was kept away from the other children, though they too were defective, abandonded; they existed in my mind only as ghosts, as pale limbs behind half-closed doors."
"The road that leads here. That takes me home again. People call it the road of bones. It is built on the bodies of the dead. The people who constructed it. All of them, prisoners. Too much work to give them a proper burial, so they left them where they fell. (...) These are dead places. They are washed in the blood of those who built them."
"In the dark, my world is infinite; on those long, bright days there is no hiding how small it truly is, how sad."
"Emptiness, where there should be voices. The radio used to be alive with them; a cacophony of voices and melodies, like birdsong in spring."
"He has given me a purpose. When you grow up monstrous, the one who grants you your humanity is the closest thing there is to God."
"But the numbers are gone, and I think I finally understand why. They have served their purpose, and so have I."
"The Looking Glass Girl"
"There's an uncomfortable intimacy in sorting through the possessions of the dead. Running your fingers through their secrets, unearthing parts of them you were never supposed to discover. Things hidden for decades held up under a bright light for all to examine, thick with dust and, sometimes, with shame."
"I never did settle down, (...) You always said I was too obstinate for marriage. You knew me better than anyone, even at that age."
"A fierce wave of grief hits me like a slap in the face, twisting a knot in my gut."
"In the Marrow"
"(...) and though she was smiling Tara did not miss the sadness in her eyes, brief but definite, like a cloud that momentarily blots out the sun."
"Looking for Laika "
"When the attacks come, he puts on his headphones and presses 'play'. It doesn't matter what the song is; when his brain fills with sound it pushes the white noise of his panic aside, drowns it slowly under percussion and bass and wailing guitar. (...)And because the tapes belong to Mum, it almost feels as though she is the one comforting him."
"He has been a fool. There is no ritual powerful enough to stop the world."
"There is so little magic left in the world. There are no windmills with the power to ward off monsters, no trolls hiding under the bridges, no special rituals to ward off disaster."
"The Pain-Eater’s Daughter"
"His expression is so fond, so distant that Sara thinks he must be somewhere else in his mind. Somewhere where the sunshine heals instead of hurts, and the whole world is home, and she is a china-doll infant nestled in warm grass, beneath the wide blue sky."
"She finds the silence as unnerving as the dark; ominous things hide in there, concealed among all the nothing."
"Her father's blood makes her dirty, strange; her mother's blood makes her weak. She belongs nowhere, to nothing, and perhaps this is freedom too, of a sort, but it feels so lonely."
- "Obsidian" 4*
- "Red Rabbit" 3*
- "Letters from Elodie" 5*
- "The Grey Men" 4*
- "Ptichka" 3.5*
- "When Charlie Sleeps" 3*
- "In the City of Bones" 4.5*
- "The Looking Glass Girl" 4.5*
- "In the Marrow" 4*
- "Looking for Laika " 5*
- "Strange as Angels" 4*
- "The Pain-Eater’s Daughter" 4*
"Sun Dogs"
"and a framed cross-stitch on the wall: "Failure to Prepare Is Preparing to Fail." Pastel colours, delicate bluebell border; a portent of doom, handcrafted with love.'"
"It was as though after a life spent preparing fastidiously for a future that might never come, I had finally learned to absorb the present; you had taught me, somehow, that the sum total of my existence could not be pared down to numbers on a spreadsheet"
"Everything you were to me had been pieced together; you were a loose-stitched patchwork of intuition, of little stories and guesswork. And I loved you, somehow, despite your insubstantiality; you cast no shadow, left no footprints, but the warmth of your body and the salt taste of your skin mattered far more. I wrapped my arms around you, the curve of your skull delicate beneath my chin. Your hair smelled like gasoline. I wondered where you'd been. "I see you, June," I said, after a time. "I believe you.""
"We had no plan, no destination, and perhaps we would fail, but for now we would run, and it seemed to me - breathless, exhilarated - that nothing in my life had been as pure, as perfect as this singular moment of freedom."
"Red Rabbit"
"Look at us, (...) Three Alices, following the rabbit down the hole."
"Letters from Elodie"
"And in the dark, a black-eyed angel; a perfect creature for whom binary notions of sex seemed quaint and inadequate. Strange, that someone so straight should wear queer so well."
"Elodi was a forest fire, burning through men, consuming hearts and leaving them in ashes, but it was never about love, or sex. She was Narcissus, and she beheld her own reflection in the eyes of her lovers."
"I'd like alone in the dark at 3 am listening to her messages over and over, revelling in her vulnerability. I'd run her entrails gently through my fingers (...) I'd savour the anger and the loneliness in her voice, feel a warm thrill in my heart at every barely suppressed sob. (...) She gave me the means to destroy her and trusted that I would never do it. That's all love is, when you strip it down to the bare bones. A loaded gun to the temple with someone else's finger on the trigger."
"I'd listened to her messages enough times that I remembered entire monologues by heart, could quite her the way other people quoted beloved films."
"Cold water rushed to embrace me. I let it take my weight, cradling my skull, gentle as a lover. Filling my mouth and ears so that I might taste her, so that I might hear her. Her words carried on the current as clear and as eerie as whale song. Her voice in the water. Elodie's last letter."
"No signs of a life. As though she had only ever been visiting."
"I'de looked inside of her and seen nothing at all but bones couched in black rot; her magpie soul, pieced together out of the fragments she stole from other people, other lives, a ransom note assembled from newsprint. I could have destroyed her, if I'd wanted to. I could have ruined her. I could have."
"The Grey Men"
"But beneath it all, Adam sensed a cold, swirling undercurrent of real dread. He wanted to capture that feeling, to put it in a jar and hold it close to his chest. To feel the panicked flutter of a hundred frightened hearts and pretend it was his own."
"I know what it's like to be lost, (...) To be lost in the fog with no way out. I know how that feels. It feels like being dead must feel. It feels like nothing."
"Ptichka"
"She deletes her search history before she leaves. I'ts impossible to know who's watching, and it's better to be paranoid than stupid. People like her have been arrested for much less."
"There is salvation only for those who can afford to pay for it."
"In the City of Bones"
"Walls filled with people, with noise, with perpetual motion. The doorways and corridors which taught me object permanence, that people continue to exist even when you cannot see them. That the places you leave behind are not quietly swallowed by the world."
"Someday, when I am dead, someone will open this drawer and find these little scraps of praise, these paper ghosts, like transmissions heard once and never again."
"You live like islands out here, (...) Scattered up and down like there's miles of ocean between you and the rest of the world."
"I was kept away from the other children, though they too were defective, abandonded; they existed in my mind only as ghosts, as pale limbs behind half-closed doors."
"The road that leads here. That takes me home again. People call it the road of bones. It is built on the bodies of the dead. The people who constructed it. All of them, prisoners. Too much work to give them a proper burial, so they left them where they fell. (...) These are dead places. They are washed in the blood of those who built them."
"In the dark, my world is infinite; on those long, bright days there is no hiding how small it truly is, how sad."
"Emptiness, where there should be voices. The radio used to be alive with them; a cacophony of voices and melodies, like birdsong in spring."
"He has given me a purpose. When you grow up monstrous, the one who grants you your humanity is the closest thing there is to God."
"But the numbers are gone, and I think I finally understand why. They have served their purpose, and so have I."
"The Looking Glass Girl"
"There's an uncomfortable intimacy in sorting through the possessions of the dead. Running your fingers through their secrets, unearthing parts of them you were never supposed to discover. Things hidden for decades held up under a bright light for all to examine, thick with dust and, sometimes, with shame."
"I never did settle down, (...) You always said I was too obstinate for marriage. You knew me better than anyone, even at that age."
"A fierce wave of grief hits me like a slap in the face, twisting a knot in my gut."
"In the Marrow"
"(...) and though she was smiling Tara did not miss the sadness in her eyes, brief but definite, like a cloud that momentarily blots out the sun."
"Looking for Laika "
"When the attacks come, he puts on his headphones and presses 'play'. It doesn't matter what the song is; when his brain fills with sound it pushes the white noise of his panic aside, drowns it slowly under percussion and bass and wailing guitar. (...)And because the tapes belong to Mum, it almost feels as though she is the one comforting him."
"He has been a fool. There is no ritual powerful enough to stop the world."
"There is so little magic left in the world. There are no windmills with the power to ward off monsters, no trolls hiding under the bridges, no special rituals to ward off disaster."
"The Pain-Eater’s Daughter"
"His expression is so fond, so distant that Sara thinks he must be somewhere else in his mind. Somewhere where the sunshine heals instead of hurts, and the whole world is home, and she is a china-doll infant nestled in warm grass, beneath the wide blue sky."
"She finds the silence as unnerving as the dark; ominous things hide in there, concealed among all the nothing."
"Her father's blood makes her dirty, strange; her mother's blood makes her weak. She belongs nowhere, to nothing, and perhaps this is freedom too, of a sort, but it feels so lonely."
softblackstars's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
zuly's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
sad
slow-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
merricatzimmerle's review against another edition
5.0
Sometimes I feel self conscious about giving everything five stars but it’s honestly just that I don’t generally read past the first chapter or story if I’m not enjoying it.
Anyway, this was an aptly titled collection. Weird and heartbreaking. And beautiful.
Anyway, this was an aptly titled collection. Weird and heartbreaking. And beautiful.
mdominiak3's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
burnetpatter's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Death
Minor: Domestic abuse