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“There was no longer any solid foundation to the world. It was all just stories.“

A beautifully rendered, challenging and often dark collection of eight short stories that somehow manage to balance the many avenues of man’s terrible brutality with the boundless tenderness of love — be it that of a mother for her child, or a Greek god, smitten by a handsome and deeply vulnerable mortal.

With brilliantly-reconsidered stories inspired by Greek mythology, Virginia Wolf, or even H.G. Wells’ Island of Dr Moreau, these tales are endlessly fascinating. The author delights in playing with the concept of reality — constructed, imagined, consciously-streamed or spiritually influenced, what we consider real and what must be illusory is stretched like taffy across these stories, as humans like us — cowards, bullies, the piteous and the self/absorbed (and even those considered monsters) live out the literary lot we are charged with, wherever it may take us.

I loved these stories, many of which will stick with me, begging for another read.

Note: for sensitive readers, some tales contain child or animal cruelty (recognizably coming) that may require skipping a paragraph or two.

A great big thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.