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A review by mariahaskins
You Have Never Been Here: New and Selected Stories by Mary Rickert
5.0
There are short stories in ‘You Have Never Been Here’ that are unsettling and disturbing, odd and brilliant, strange and weirdly beautiful, all at the same time. All the short stories share an ever-present vibe of dark suspense and skewed reality that keeps you on edge throughout, and some of the stories are so skillfully executed in their madness that I know they will stick with me for a long time.
Rickert’s tales teem with death and ghosts and bones, love and loss and haunting imagery. There are dead children, winged children, ghost children, and children collecting bones. There are drowned women who work in coffee shops, a shoe-box full of stones that hold memories of past lives, men building boats in their backyards, a corpse painter, and a strange place that might or might not be a hospital, and a train that might or might not really be a train taking patients to that hospital.
The stories that appealed to me most were ‘Memoir of a Deer Woman’, where a woman is slowly turning into (back into?) a deer; ‘The Shipbuilder’, where a man named Quark tries to understand his own past and his abusive father (or is it really his father?); and especially ‘The Christmas Witch’.
‘The Christmas Witch’ perfectly crafted: a complex weave of witchcraft, weirdness, family, childhood, grief, fear, and loss; with a child at its center who is just as complicate and ornery and powerful and strange as real children can be.
This is a strange and often wonderful collection of stories, even though there are a couple of tales (‘Holiday’ and ‘The Chambered Fruit’ come to mind) that I found so unsettling that they were almost difficult to read. That said, I have a feeling that different readers will find different tales to be the most unsettling.
If you’re into twisted tales that veer off into suspense and even a dab of restrained horror, then this is a book for you.
Rickert’s tales teem with death and ghosts and bones, love and loss and haunting imagery. There are dead children, winged children, ghost children, and children collecting bones. There are drowned women who work in coffee shops, a shoe-box full of stones that hold memories of past lives, men building boats in their backyards, a corpse painter, and a strange place that might or might not be a hospital, and a train that might or might not really be a train taking patients to that hospital.
The stories that appealed to me most were ‘Memoir of a Deer Woman’, where a woman is slowly turning into (back into?) a deer; ‘The Shipbuilder’, where a man named Quark tries to understand his own past and his abusive father (or is it really his father?); and especially ‘The Christmas Witch’.
‘The Christmas Witch’ perfectly crafted: a complex weave of witchcraft, weirdness, family, childhood, grief, fear, and loss; with a child at its center who is just as complicate and ornery and powerful and strange as real children can be.
This is a strange and often wonderful collection of stories, even though there are a couple of tales (‘Holiday’ and ‘The Chambered Fruit’ come to mind) that I found so unsettling that they were almost difficult to read. That said, I have a feeling that different readers will find different tales to be the most unsettling.
If you’re into twisted tales that veer off into suspense and even a dab of restrained horror, then this is a book for you.