pickConcerning the Future of Souls: 99 Stories of Azrael, by Joy Williams (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: 99 vignettes about the legendary psychopomp angel Azrael.
Review: This does exactly what it sets out to do, but what it does didn‘t quite work for me. Being a collection of 99 very short stories, it necessarily flits over the surface of some interesting content. So it felt more like butterfly kisses than a story. But tit‘s still good.
My great grandfather and his younger brother and a barn
#barn
#falling
#familyhistory
@eggs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
pickThe three short stories in this collection are sad and strange, the protagonists living liminal existences which alienate them from the rest of humanity. There's a feel of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in the changes that the characters undergo: surreal and tragic.
The longest (but still fairly short) story, "Nami, Who Wanted to Get Hit (and Eventually Succeeded)" is the saddest, dealing with bullying, child sexual exploitation and abuse, ⬇️
"Asa lived with her mother in a small rented apartment."
#FirstLineFridays @Shybookowl
And now, for something completely different!
Three short stories, large font to make it look more substantial than it is 🧐, but it looks pretty, so, like Dr. Frank N. Furter, we'll forgive it.
I bought this RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute) bookmark today. It doesn't fit the criteria for #BookmarkMatching , but there it is, anyway 🔖
#doublespin for this month was 5 more short stories in this anthology… I‘m up to more modern stories now and finding them more enjoyable than some of the older stuff!
pickPaul Biga,an Australian taxi driver who picks up young women and men,then kills them is at the center of each story without ever being the main character.Yet the characters in each story are somehow affected by the murders.There‘s Eva,principal of the school Biga attended&his former neighbor,Simon whose sister is one of his victims or Grace who fought back&got away.
so-soAn ex library book I got it not knowing it was short stories. I‘m not a fan of short stories. I was in my younger days. Anyway I gave this a go. The best story was the last one which was titled Australia Day. So that made me glad I had persevered and made it to the end. A story I feel is probably close to the authors heart.
"It seems that somehow the hearts of human beings and trees are connected."
- The Princess and the Nutmeg Tree ??❤️?
