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alexandramilne 's review for:
The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night
by Jen Campbell
Read my other book reviews at booksibled.wordpress.com
It’s been a while since I picked up a book of short stories. I’d seen the hardback on the shelves at Waterstones but I wasn’t certain I wanted to delve back into bits of people’s stories without the world and the context.
In general I’m a novel loving girl. I want to dive head long into a narrative and resurface in a week or so with a new perspective on the world and the slight grief of not having those people and their lives to fall back into. But I was also getting a bit complacent, slowing down in my reading (and obviously in my reviewing, as you can tell) so when I was buying something else I slipped it into my basket and carried it all the way home where it sat on my to be read pile for about a month before I finally opened it up.
The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night is an interesting collection of stories. To me, these are night time stories, they have just the right dose of reality and wonder to make them almost dream like and dreams rarely make perfect sense, they’re normally just snapshots of events. One particular conversation stuck with me, the one the book is named for, between a man and woman sitting in bed late at night. The complex thoughts with child like sincerity and wonder touches on the main themes I got from this collection. A sense of wonder at the world, a dash of myth in the reality and the sinister elements of fairy tales that we have used for centuries to explain the world around us.
I recognised elements, like the bird hearts and girls with one foot in each of the lands of the living and dead but Campbell weaves new stories from old and leaves you with the beautiful but sinister feeling of a great fairy tale. The stories feel older, timeless even but they are far more diverse and welcoming than many more well known legends are. The dreamy sense allows her to explore the feelings of not belonging, of finding yourself in a strange place or caught in events you cant escape while still holding the safe quality that soon you might wake up.
Obviously, as with all short story books there were stories I enjoyed more than others but there were none that stood out to me as breaking the mood or lesser in quality. It left me with a shiver and a final sip of tea before bed, fittingly close to midnight.
P.S. An excellent collection of short stories and poetry with a dreamy fairy tale feel and a dark undertone. The perfect book for an evening curled in bed with a hot drink and a warm blanket.
It’s been a while since I picked up a book of short stories. I’d seen the hardback on the shelves at Waterstones but I wasn’t certain I wanted to delve back into bits of people’s stories without the world and the context.
In general I’m a novel loving girl. I want to dive head long into a narrative and resurface in a week or so with a new perspective on the world and the slight grief of not having those people and their lives to fall back into. But I was also getting a bit complacent, slowing down in my reading (and obviously in my reviewing, as you can tell) so when I was buying something else I slipped it into my basket and carried it all the way home where it sat on my to be read pile for about a month before I finally opened it up.
The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night is an interesting collection of stories. To me, these are night time stories, they have just the right dose of reality and wonder to make them almost dream like and dreams rarely make perfect sense, they’re normally just snapshots of events. One particular conversation stuck with me, the one the book is named for, between a man and woman sitting in bed late at night. The complex thoughts with child like sincerity and wonder touches on the main themes I got from this collection. A sense of wonder at the world, a dash of myth in the reality and the sinister elements of fairy tales that we have used for centuries to explain the world around us.
I recognised elements, like the bird hearts and girls with one foot in each of the lands of the living and dead but Campbell weaves new stories from old and leaves you with the beautiful but sinister feeling of a great fairy tale. The stories feel older, timeless even but they are far more diverse and welcoming than many more well known legends are. The dreamy sense allows her to explore the feelings of not belonging, of finding yourself in a strange place or caught in events you cant escape while still holding the safe quality that soon you might wake up.
Obviously, as with all short story books there were stories I enjoyed more than others but there were none that stood out to me as breaking the mood or lesser in quality. It left me with a shiver and a final sip of tea before bed, fittingly close to midnight.
P.S. An excellent collection of short stories and poetry with a dreamy fairy tale feel and a dark undertone. The perfect book for an evening curled in bed with a hot drink and a warm blanket.