Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart And Other Stories
Description
From the author of the breakout fantasy novel Thistlefoot : a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring all the ways love can save us—or go monstrously wrong.
The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, hungry the desire to be loved, and seen, and known. And the terror of those things to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be known and recognized as the monstrous thing you are.
Two young women working at a sinister roadside attraction called the "Eternal Staircase" explore its secrets—and their own doomed summer love. A group of witchy teens concoct the perfect plan to induce the hated new girl into their ranks. 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. And two 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, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores love 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.
Review
Giovanna Centeno6th Feb. 2024If there is one word to describe this collection, it is devastating. I mean that in the heartbreakingly beautiful kind of devastation. The overall theme of the entire collection is the individual’s relationship with the world around them, be it in the form of relationships, nature, time, etc. Generally, when it comes to short story collections, only three stories truly stay with me and spark something new in my creative brain. However, in this collection, GennaRose Nethercott managed to keep me gripped in each story for days; even as I couldn’t put the book down (I read it in two sittings), I would catch myself reflecting on each story for days on end, re-reading them even if just to appreciate the unique level of craft each story required, from world building to execution the stories here never felt forced or repetitive in their imagery or plot. With simple sentences, entire worlds were brought to life, with the expert simplicity every writer aims for. One of my favorite stories, “Thread Boy,” had such beautiful imagery, with, of course, using folk ideas of fate as a connecting thread that felt at the same time familiar and unique, the suspension between what the reader already understands of their world, and what it will come to know of Nethercott’s is almost like a waltz grabbing you by the hand and hips, never forcing you into a rhythm or tripping over your feet. Instead, what Nethercott accomplishes here is to perfectly seduce us into these characters and their worlds by allowing our imagination just enough unsaid for it to run wild. In the titular story, this happens through the annotations of Florists embarking on scientific research, where we see an entire friendship, professional life, and relationship unfold through field notes regarding fantastical monsters in the wild. Others, like “Homebody” and “Sundown at the Eternal Staircase,” where the environment beautifully reflects the narrator’s psyche, take you through sensory disruption and exploration. The writing is also outstanding; I wanna shout out here specifically the story “Possessions,” with passages like this one that, with such impressive nonchalance, tell us about an entire family’s dynamic in a short paragraph. “Usually, the girls’ dad, Gary, would be in the living room playing cello or trying to snare one of us into a debate about the legitimacy or lack thereof of homeopathic medicine. Not driving up and down Route 2 for twelve hours a day calling his daughter’s name. When Aimee was born and he gave her that name, he never meant for it to be howled like this –– again and again into the pitiless woods.” The writing quality is superb throughout the collection, and I can’t wait to continue to follow Nethercott’s career and explore her backlist after reading it.
