Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart
And Other Stories
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- ¥850
発行者による作品情報
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us—or go monstrously wrong.
“Real magic, real delight, doled out generously in the shape of wistful, ferocious, this-world-but-better stories.”—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, ravenous yearning: the hunger to be held, and seen, and known. And the terror, too: to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be recognized as the monstrous thing you are.
Two teenage girls working at a sinister roadside attraction called the Eternal Staircase explore its secrets—and their own doomed summer love. A zombie rooster plays detective in a missing persons case. A woman moves into a new house with her acclaimed artist boyfriend—and finds her body slowly shifting into something specially constructed to accommodate his needs and whims. A pack of middle schoolers turn to the occult to rid themselves of a hated new classmate. And a pair of outcasts, a vampire and a goat woman, find solace in each other, even as the world's lack of understanding might bring about its own end.
In these lush, strange, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores human longing in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.
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Nethercott (Thistlefoot) collects 14 delectable dark fairy tales which tend to start in worlds that feel almost comfortable—until the shadows thicken and all at once everything has teeth. Some of the beastly creatures featured here are literal monsters, as in the title tale, which is presented as a bestiary (with splendid illustrations by Bobby DiTrani) assembled by three florists who create strange bouquets of creatures. Others are much more human, like the sixth graders in "A Diviner's Abecedarian." Girls playing fortune-telling games in the schoolyard and during sleepovers is a familiar motif—but what if they could tell exactly how the new girl in class would die? Nethercott's supremely confident prose assists—and indeed demands—the suspension of disbelief; of course a woman can become a house, if she wishes ("Homebody"). Naturally, water might leap from lakes and bottles and clouds to drown a girl where she stands ("Drowning Lessons"). And why shouldn't a reality-bending, mind-shattering staircase also be a slightly tacky local tourist attraction ("Sundown at the Eternal Staircase")? That's simply how the world is. By the end of this grimly fantastic collection, readers will have bought in entirely.
