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A review by holly_ed_
All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva
2.0
An interestingly written collection of grotesque, stylized short stories that made me wonder if it’s necessary to like the writing to enjoy the book. I gobbled down the first installment, The World by Night, a really inventive and surprising story told with deftness and a surety of phrase, but then found myself cooling as I progressed, knowing I should be admiring the writing but actually, not enjoying the plots.
The collection explores ideas of fate and predestination, often railing / cautioning against the ordinariness of life and speculating how much you can alter or take revenge on the world around you. Stories range from a millworker who ends up finding ancient artifacts in the desert after a bizarre accident, to a seaman being captivated by a mermaid, to kidnapped women exerting their own mysterious powers over their captors.
While I found the ideas interesting, I was never completely immersed in these unsettling mirror universes (almost ours but not quite). Maybe the point is to make the reader unsettled, but I found some of the ideas so fantastical that I couldn’t wrap my head around them, the world they occurred in too similar to mine it suspend my disbelief. A failing on my part, I think rather than the writing, as this collection has had rave reviews all over the place. I always have to work hard at short stories, and these were just too much hard work for me.
The collection explores ideas of fate and predestination, often railing / cautioning against the ordinariness of life and speculating how much you can alter or take revenge on the world around you. Stories range from a millworker who ends up finding ancient artifacts in the desert after a bizarre accident, to a seaman being captivated by a mermaid, to kidnapped women exerting their own mysterious powers over their captors.
While I found the ideas interesting, I was never completely immersed in these unsettling mirror universes (almost ours but not quite). Maybe the point is to make the reader unsettled, but I found some of the ideas so fantastical that I couldn’t wrap my head around them, the world they occurred in too similar to mine it suspend my disbelief. A failing on my part, I think rather than the writing, as this collection has had rave reviews all over the place. I always have to work hard at short stories, and these were just too much hard work for me.