I’ve enjoyed reading more collections pushing boundaries—topically or in form, or both—but The True Account of Myself as a Bird is a much more meditative and deceptively simpler animal that has left me with a greater appreciation for the seemingly ordinary things around me.
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An Overlooked Character Gets Life in ‘Other Bennet Sister’
Yes, there’s a romance in The Other Bennet Sister, but, crucially, it comes as neither the product or instigator of her inner discovery and change. The emphasis is again and again on Mary as a person.
‘The Future’ A Chilling Story of the Near-Present
A lot of the elements within The Future are easy to find in today’s headlines. It makes the world that Alderman unfolds eerily familiar, and that familiarity functions as a tether through the jumping, crisscrossing, and otherwise shuffled times and places through which we unpack the story.
‘Good Bones’ a Charming Family Horror
The house is haunted in Good Bones, but the supernatural danger is far more interested the people than the structure in which they reside. Although, you know, that’s important, too. This is, after all, a haunted house story.
‘Fuzz’ Prompts a Different View of our Animal Neighbors
The clash between humans and the fauna we surround ourselves with—and are surrounded by—is both frequent and frequently deadly for one or the other of us. How do we treat our fellow animals, and how can we treat them better? Roach has a few ideas, and while none of them are easy or convenient, they’re worth considering.
‘Hollow’ a ‘Bittersweet’ and Magical YA Mystery
Bittersweet was fun, and sad, and mysterious. Juniper’s world is full of love, and a whole lot of unanswered questions, and magic aside, that’s what it feels like to be a teenager a lot of the time. Pearsall’s worldbuilding, and the obvious love she has for all her characters, is what really brings this story home. Sometimes, I could almost feel the sticky heat of summer or taste the family’s famous lemon bars.
‘Legends’ Warm Enough to Melt Any Heart
Nothing about Legends & Lattes is going to change the world, but it’s comforting and uplifting. It made me smile. Apparently, it makes a lot of people smile, and that’s plenty valuable all by itself. Then again, maybe it can change the world, just a little.
‘Crane Husband’ a Critical Look at Love, Art
The Crane Husband is a meditation on responsibility and art and what love actually means, and so beautifully written that even with material like this you may still feel that you could fly away when you reach the end.
‘Rose House’ Chilling in its Plausibility
This is not a horror novel, but its premise manages to be spine-tingling for the picture it paints—not bleak, exactly, but pragmatic to the point of irrationality, yet difficult to argue with.
‘The Facemaker’ Revives a Forgotten History
Reading The Facemaker also feels like an act of witnessing something that shouldn’t have ever been forgotten. We did this to ourselves, from the standpoint of humanity, and over a hundred years later, we haven’t stopped.
Ring Reads 