Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird
Stories
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2.8 • 14 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An NPR Best Book of 2023
A collection of twenty 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 twenty 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Argentine writer Bazterrica's provocative collection (after the novel Tender Is the Flesh), scenes of fantastical metamorphoses add a touch of levity to disturbing chronicles of self-mutilation and suicide. "Roberto," the brief and off-kilter opener, features a schoolgirl with a bunny growing between her legs who's preyed upon by her math teacher. In "The Continuous Equality of the Circumference," an allegory of perfection taken to the extreme, protagonist Ada transforms her body into the shape of a circle, first by gaining weight and then by cutting off her arms and legs. In "Elena-Marie Sandoz," a B-movie actor dies by suicide after receiving a series of letters encouraging her to do so. Here, Bazterrica writes mordantly of the strange compulsion to visit decrepit cemeteries such as the one where Sandoz is buried: "People are capable of anything to dissipate the monotony of their lives." Even the lighter entries are strangely unsettling, such as "No Tears," about a family renowned for never crying who attend funerals to make the bereaved laugh. Though the author leans a bit much on shock value, she adds depth to the strange and eerie atmosphere with recurring themes of religion and death ("She wants to be the divine abode in which the sacred is housed," Bazterrica writes of the self-sacrificing Ada). Vivid and bizarre, this will entrance.
Customer Reviews
Very disappointing story collection
This collection felt like a quick cash grab from the publisher after her success with Tender. The majority of the stories feel rushed or incomplete, or end abruptly when they are just starting to get good, and a lot that just read like bad first drafts. There are a couple of stories I did enjoy, like Roberto and Candy Pink, but I could not recommend this book as a whole.