You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Scan barcode
rorikae's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
After her father's death, Rita is wallowing in her grief. To help her, Rita's girlfriend Molly applies for an artists residency for her. When Molly surprises her with the accepted residency application, Rita isn't completely sold but she decides to go anyway. Alone in the forest by a large pond, Rita delves into her grief through her painting but her feelings threaten to overwhelm her, especially when she starts to see strange things.
This is an excellent, evocative novella though it comes with strong content warnings for grief, loss of a parent, and suicidal ideation. Though we only spend so much time with Rita, Morris does an excellent job of helping us to understand her grief and how it is affecting her. She accomplishes this through a mix of beautiful and horrific nature writing with a slightly supernatural aspect. Rita is deep in her grief and since we are seeing the world through her eyes, it's unclear what is just a hallucination and what is real. One of my favorite aspects of the story is that each chapter starts with looking at one of the paintings that Rita created during the residency. These paintings help to inform our view of Rita's experience and how she is coming to terms with her grief.
Morris' writing is lush and horrifying at the same time. I will definitely be looking to pick up more of what they write next.
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Body horror
cantfindmybookmark's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, and Grief
spicycronereads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Rita, the main character, is really the only character. She goes to a remote cabin to spend an artist residency for which her girlfriend has applied for her without telling her. So we do see a little bit of her girlfriend from time to time and in flashback, but she’s really almost a tertiary character. The environment is like a secondary character with Rita being the main character.
Tiffany Morris’ writing is really poetic and lyrical. I found myself highlighting tons of passages because they were just so beautifully written.
If you were looking for a horror story, this is pretty unconventional. There is no gore, no killers, and no hauntings or violence, other than that of the landscape, and what is done to the landscape by people. Part of the narrative convention, which I found really neat, is that parts of the story are told by artist reviews of Rita’s paintings. And so we very closely see the relationship between art, ecology, and life in the novel.
In terms of diverse representation, Morris is a queer, indigenous author, and Rita is an indigenous character of the Mi’kmaw people. It’s not clear whether her mother is also indigenous, but there is a lot of emphasis in the narrative about her father and her connection to her indigenous background through her father.
Overall, even though it’s a pretty short book, it took me quite a while to read, because the depth of the grief had to be taken in slow doses for me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, and Grief
Moderate: Body horror, Sexual content, and Fire/Fire injury
nerolireads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Thank you Netgalley and Stelliform Press for this arc!
Graphic: Body horror and Grief
bookishcori's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, and Grief
obscurepages's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Wow. I dove into this book not knowing much other than it's an Indigenous horror novella. What I got now is a brilliant character study of a woman struggling with her mental health, insecurities, Indigenous identity, her drive to create art, and her reconciling nature with life and death.
I have to say, the imagery and the prose in this book is something else. Something entirely its own.
Overall, this was an incredible mix of both unsettling and profound.
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, and Blood
Moderate: Grief and Death of parent
Minor: Body horror and Sexual content
wchereads's review against another edition
5.0
"It's easier to carry this understanding [of death/grief] with us as we go, to stop ignoring it and pretending it will never happen - because this pretending is part of what makes each loss devastate us so totally."
"When we lose someone, we are forced into the deeply lonely experience of disillusion alongside the terrible fact of our loss... we must instead wade every day into our understanding of death and how death creates meaning."
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror and Death of parent
Minor: Emotional abuse
luckylulureads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Mental illness, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Grief, and Death of parent
sproutedpages's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Suicidal thoughts, and Grief
Moderate: Blood, Medical trauma, and Death of parent
sophee_568's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
After her girlfriend Molly gifts her a 7-day artist's retreat at a secluded cabin in the woods, Rita Francis decides to take a break from the mundanity of her job at the art store and seek inspiration in nature. Even though Molly went behind Rita's back and kickstarted a funded art project she clumsily named The Devouring, Rita could not be ungrateful and reject such a generous present. On the first night at the cabin, Rita awakes in the dead of night to the sound of footsteps on gravel and something being thrown into the pond. Her immediate thought is that someone threw a body into the pond, but she sees nothing after peeking out the window. During the rest of her stay in the woods, Rita continues to experience bizarre events, all somehow connected to the large pond near her cabin. After a somnambulistic episode, Rita wakes up in the woods disoriented. Soon she comes face to face with a mysterious woman engulfed in flames. Who is this woman, and what does she want with Rita?
In only 100-ish pages, Green Fuse Burning utterly grips the reader and makes them listen to Rita's story. With its surrealist, introspective writing, Tiffany Morris invites us to the humid, muddy lands of Nova Scotia. Just like the author herself, our protagonist Rita is an Indigenous woman, specifically belonging to the Mi'kmaw people.
Morris's debut novel revolves around the ever-important topic of grief and healing. Years after Rita's father had died, she still struggled to make peace with his passing. Her grief pressed down on her, stifled her creativity, made her passive, and caused a strain on her relationship with Molly. That is why the artist's retreat provided a wonderful opportunity for Rita to connect with the natural world around her and explore the depths of her imagination.
Each chapter of the novella begins with a short review of one of Rita's paintings she had made during her stay at the cabin. Rita's mixed media acrylic paintings represent the mental transmutation she underwent in the woods. The most prominent color in her paintings is green, which Rita associates with grief.
"How would she ever capture that devouring green, even with these shades lined up so perfectly, neatly, their vibrance still nowhere near the sickeningly alive world around her..."
Morris uses body horror to show us Rita struggling with her grief. There are a few graphic scenes but nothing too gory. Green Fuse Burning is a tale of normalizing death and grief. We all face loss at some point in our lives. The novella sends a message that we should not shy away from grieving. It can be a messy, exhausting, and long-lasting process, but we should not deny ourselves the experience. Grief is a deeply transformative time for everyone. As Rita says, we do not protect life by denying death's existence. Green Fuse Burning is a powerful elegy to the cycle of death and life, grief and healing. It is also a love letter to wetlands, swamps, bogs, and the rest.
Thank you to Netgalley for the review copy!
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts and Grief
Moderate: Body horror and Death of parent