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A review by wordsmithreads
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories by Laura van den Berg
4.0
She told us that evil rarely looked like evil when it first arrived.
I have now read a few different collections of short stories, though I still consider myself a reader who is novel-focused. I say this because I think if I had come to Laura van den Berg first, I would have become a voracious short story reader. They're like miniature horror stories.
There are 11 stories in this collection, and the titular story, which closes the collection, was actually my least favorite, along with Lizards, though I found myself relating to the woman in it a tad too much.
The stories are unsettling, something always seeming just a little bit off, but I found them endlessly compelling.
My favorites: Slumberland, Volcano House, Your Second Wife. (notably, these are all in first person, while some of the other stories are not.)
I can't say much more about these other than they feel dream-like and interesting enough that I would read a whole volume more of any of my three favorite ones, though some of the others are equally suitable to be long, drawn-out campfire stories to set your teeth on edge.
A collection of my favorite lines:
-... this is the problem with translating experience into fiction, the way certain truths read like lies.
- The lodgers, mostly women.... tended to look either like they had just arrived on earth or like they had been stuck in this motel for all eternity.
- That was how things went in these big apartment complexes; they were a kind of purgatory where we docks until our souls were called elsewhere.
- I have learned that one must be very carful about the desperate wishes cast out into the ether because perhaps someone is listening, someone all too willing to grant us exactly what we have asked for and maybe even what we deserve."
- I thought about how few things were more ancient than the bartering of souls."
- If nature loves symmetry then why is symmetry so cruel?
- ... she feels so angry she's surprised surfaces don't ignite when she touches them.
- I didn't understand yet that refusing one kind of narrative could activate another.
- I've always thought of her as the anchor: predictable, stationary. A point on the map I could return to.
- A wind shakes the branches. I find myself listening for the crack of a gun.
- ... but what about the things that can't be quantified, like the difference between kindness and cowardice, or the meaning of life?
I have now read a few different collections of short stories, though I still consider myself a reader who is novel-focused. I say this because I think if I had come to Laura van den Berg first, I would have become a voracious short story reader. They're like miniature horror stories.
There are 11 stories in this collection, and the titular story, which closes the collection, was actually my least favorite, along with Lizards, though I found myself relating to the woman in it a tad too much.
The stories are unsettling, something always seeming just a little bit off, but I found them endlessly compelling.
My favorites: Slumberland, Volcano House, Your Second Wife. (notably, these are all in first person, while some of the other stories are not.)
I can't say much more about these other than they feel dream-like and interesting enough that I would read a whole volume more of any of my three favorite ones, though some of the others are equally suitable to be long, drawn-out campfire stories to set your teeth on edge.
A collection of my favorite lines:
-... this is the problem with translating experience into fiction, the way certain truths read like lies.
- The lodgers, mostly women.... tended to look either like they had just arrived on earth or like they had been stuck in this motel for all eternity.
- That was how things went in these big apartment complexes; they were a kind of purgatory where we docks until our souls were called elsewhere.
- I have learned that one must be very carful about the desperate wishes cast out into the ether because perhaps someone is listening, someone all too willing to grant us exactly what we have asked for and maybe even what we deserve."
- I thought about how few things were more ancient than the bartering of souls."
- If nature loves symmetry then why is symmetry so cruel?
- ... she feels so angry she's surprised surfaces don't ignite when she touches them.
- I didn't understand yet that refusing one kind of narrative could activate another.
- I've always thought of her as the anchor: predictable, stationary. A point on the map I could return to.
- A wind shakes the branches. I find myself listening for the crack of a gun.
- ... but what about the things that can't be quantified, like the difference between kindness and cowardice, or the meaning of life?