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Synopsis:
A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.
From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.
Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.
Review:
After reading and loving Tender is the Flesh, I was excited to read Agustina Bazterrica’s follow-up, Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird. This collection is twenty stories, ranging from very short to medium short, none of the stories much more than ten pages long. With the collection being so many stories but the book length being so short, it is easy for me to forget the plots of some of the stories a few hours after reading them. Many of them feel more like scenes, sketches, and character studies than actual stories.
There are some standout moments in this collection, some moments when I am reminded that Agustina Bazterrica wrote Tender is the Flesh, a nasty, incredible novel about people who eat people because they cannot give up meat. Stories like “Unamuno’s Boxes”, “Elena-Marie Sadoz”, “No Tears” and “The Continuous Equality of the Circumference” remind me that Bazterrica is a great writer, a storytelling with dense, powerful language and strong imagery. These are elements that make Tender is the Flesh such a compelling story. Most of the stories I like in this collection are the stories that are longer, because Bazterrica takes the time to give us more so we can be mesmerized in the language of the story’s world, feel what the characters are feeling, and be attached to the conclusions. Most of these stories have horrible outcomes, many of them end in self-harm and suicide, and when we are given any time with the characters, we can feel their emotions before their final acts. It cannot be understated that by the time I have read a few of the stories, I know that most all of the outcomes are bleak, that all of the stories are being told under a black cloud, and that there are no real happy endings to be seen.
Bleakness has been Bazterrica’s style so far. There is not much happiness in the worlds that she creates, and I can appreciate this type of storytelling. Unfortunately there are many times during this collection when I just do not have the time to get attached to the story, and it is over before it has even really started. I would like to read another short story collection by her with the same page count but with half the stories. Her power is in worldbuilding and creating a breathing character, building up a tower before knocking it all down. Many of the stories in this collection are too short for this to happen.
I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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