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hsienhsien27's review
3.0
I won this in a TNBBC Giveaway, Thanks!
So I had seen this short story collection in multiple review sites and had this on a mental wish list. I was also on a short story collection binge and as soon as this was announced on TNBBC, of course, I went for it.
I've seen this guy's name elsewhere, but I don't quite remember exactly where. But the cover is very distinctive and art plays a role in this book. The rising sun, the decrepit tree, and it's roots. I believe the bucket represents something, but I'm not sure what. The interiors consist of drawings too. The scratchy artwork fits the gritty nature of the book and some of them I actually found kind of amusing because I'm a sick soul.
The whole style of this collection is a cycle of stories that seem to take place in the same area amongst the same group of people in a Southern town that seems to be rather deep in the dumps. Dumps as in darkness and vile people. There's violence and drugs, spiteful kids and dysfunctional people, religious fanatics and all of the things that make most of Southern gothic literature.
And I honestly haven't read much of that genre of literature. The only thing I have read that is probably close to that genre was To Kill a Mocking Bird and a few pages of Ellen Foster. But I'm not unfamiliar with southern talk. But I don't know, I read so many positive reviews, but my feelings for this were quite mixed.
The collection started off good and the whole elements of the collection, that feels like a novel, was already built within the first two stories. Dysfunction and violence in a small town where drugs and failed escapes seem to be the only ways out.
But I don't know maybe my brain was just finally get fried during the reading of this collection. Because I can say that it is brilliant, but I felt like giving up. Not because it was bad, but because I was just not in the mood to read this, but at the same time I wanted to finish it to see what would happen and for discussion purposes. But I guess it could also be the levels of depression in this story collection, I actually thought that this was a Dystopian collection, not a Southern Goth collection. If any of you reading this have recommendation for Southern Goth other than Cormac McCarthy, who I hope to get to at some point in my life because my school library has a whole collection of his writings, go ahead, and recommend them in the comments section.
I always feel like long short stories are my least favorite, unless the story is a novella by itself. I guess I can say that I get burnout while reading short stories. Because of my favorites in this collection are the shorter ones. I think I got tired by the time I reached the 80s, which had one of the longest short stories. The writing style is actually pretty comprehensible compared to other Southern Goth lit that I have flipped through. It was written in plain old English and sometimes I do find, recently I found, that it is hard for me to get into stories written in third person. But then I keep thinking that maybe I do sort of like this story collection, because I enjoyed most of them, but mostly the short ones.
But I guess I can say that this collection was nothing new to me, other than being really messed up, which was the point, gloom and doom. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it at all.
So here's the favorite stories:
Visqueen
The Poor Man's Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide
Pet Wife
A Hindershot of Calion
Ole Hazel
Queen Anne Black Din
Cleaner Miranda
Grace
Stroke Test
Rating: 3.5/5
So I had seen this short story collection in multiple review sites and had this on a mental wish list. I was also on a short story collection binge and as soon as this was announced on TNBBC, of course, I went for it.
I've seen this guy's name elsewhere, but I don't quite remember exactly where. But the cover is very distinctive and art plays a role in this book. The rising sun, the decrepit tree, and it's roots. I believe the bucket represents something, but I'm not sure what. The interiors consist of drawings too. The scratchy artwork fits the gritty nature of the book and some of them I actually found kind of amusing because I'm a sick soul.
The whole style of this collection is a cycle of stories that seem to take place in the same area amongst the same group of people in a Southern town that seems to be rather deep in the dumps. Dumps as in darkness and vile people. There's violence and drugs, spiteful kids and dysfunctional people, religious fanatics and all of the things that make most of Southern gothic literature.
And I honestly haven't read much of that genre of literature. The only thing I have read that is probably close to that genre was To Kill a Mocking Bird and a few pages of Ellen Foster. But I'm not unfamiliar with southern talk. But I don't know, I read so many positive reviews, but my feelings for this were quite mixed.
The collection started off good and the whole elements of the collection, that feels like a novel, was already built within the first two stories. Dysfunction and violence in a small town where drugs and failed escapes seem to be the only ways out.
But I don't know maybe my brain was just finally get fried during the reading of this collection. Because I can say that it is brilliant, but I felt like giving up. Not because it was bad, but because I was just not in the mood to read this, but at the same time I wanted to finish it to see what would happen and for discussion purposes. But I guess it could also be the levels of depression in this story collection, I actually thought that this was a Dystopian collection, not a Southern Goth collection. If any of you reading this have recommendation for Southern Goth other than Cormac McCarthy, who I hope to get to at some point in my life because my school library has a whole collection of his writings, go ahead, and recommend them in the comments section.
I always feel like long short stories are my least favorite, unless the story is a novella by itself. I guess I can say that I get burnout while reading short stories. Because of my favorites in this collection are the shorter ones. I think I got tired by the time I reached the 80s, which had one of the longest short stories. The writing style is actually pretty comprehensible compared to other Southern Goth lit that I have flipped through. It was written in plain old English and sometimes I do find, recently I found, that it is hard for me to get into stories written in third person. But then I keep thinking that maybe I do sort of like this story collection, because I enjoyed most of them, but mostly the short ones.
But I guess I can say that this collection was nothing new to me, other than being really messed up, which was the point, gloom and doom. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it at all.
So here's the favorite stories:
Visqueen
The Poor Man's Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide
Pet Wife
A Hindershot of Calion
Ole Hazel
Queen Anne Black Din
Cleaner Miranda
Grace
Stroke Test
Rating: 3.5/5
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