A review by venneh
Ariadne, I Love You by J. Ashley-Smith

4.0

This is a neat, short spooky novella about yearning and the things it can conjure. Most of it centers around an alcoholic alt-country star, his infatuation with a woman who became his muse, and how he is dealing with her death. Fun fact - in looking the summary up, I found out that Jude is supposed to be a male POV, but because it’s first person, and Jude is never definitively referred to by other people in the story with pronouns, I thought Jude was a woman and this was a story of lesbian love/yearning. No offense to Mr. Ashley-Smith, and it’s entirely possible I missed something, but I’m going to stick with my interpretation. The spookiness comes in in the form of the Australian outback, and what can be summoned by something like, say, longing for your dead muse, the differences between the person she actually was and how you idealized her, and your own downward addictive spiral even before she died. Very gothic, and a solid read. Page through it if you get the chance.