Take a photo of a barcode or cover
readingcities 's review for:
Fen
by Daisy Johnson
This one was mixed for me. I loved Johnson's novel, Everything Under, and these stories had a lot of the elements that resonated in that work - life in the lowlands and on the water, strange siblings and misted childhood remembrances, shadows of fairy tale and myth, a kind of removed sense of darkness, spinning and playing with sexuality and gender. There were absolutely some impressive stories in this collection, but overall it was a little affected for me. Kelly Link/Aimee Beder-esque in a way that felt dated and done. This should've been a quick read, but it ended up taking me a few days to push through because I didn't want to pick it up, and got quickly preoccupied and bored with the stories when actually reading. I'm probably giving this collection a harder time than it deserves, and might have been more patient if I hadn't been so impressed by Everything Under - Fen felt (probably accurately) like unfinished sketches for the more developed full-length novel that follows.