The Unfinished World, by Amber Sparks
I love reading short stories, those complex nuggets of prose poetry that knock at the door of your heart and casually rip it open when you answer. All the stories in Sparks' ethereal collection are fairy tales, some more derivative than others, but all with the same otherworldly quality that some might clumsily call magical realism but is much more unique. These stories remind me of All the Names They Used for God, though The Unfinished World was published several years before it (I'm getting caught up on some embarrassingly old Advanced Reader's Copies this vacation).
Sparks' characters are lonely, cut off from familial love by death or disaster or human awkwardness. Though all quite interesting, they started to become a bit interchangeable by the last few stories. The worlds they inhabit, however, are wildly different: spaceships, werewolves, underground taxidermy, time travel, and, much to my delight, even a story about those old dinosaur hunters I recently read about, Marsh and Cope. Many stories are just a few pages long, and while I liked them quite a bit, I was frustrated by the fast pace of reading through them. I simultaneously wanted to read more and pause between each so I could appreciate each story fully. The pacing and order of the stories could have helped by alternating short pieces with longer ones instead of having a string of very short stories all in a row. All the same, it's a wonderful collection of highly unique pieces by an author working competently within her own idiom, and I enjoyed it immensely.
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Sparks' characters are lonely, cut off from familial love by death or disaster or human awkwardness. Though all quite interesting, they started to become a bit interchangeable by the last few stories. The worlds they inhabit, however, are wildly different: spaceships, werewolves, underground taxidermy, time travel, and, much to my delight, even a story about those old dinosaur hunters I recently read about, Marsh and Cope. Many stories are just a few pages long, and while I liked them quite a bit, I was frustrated by the fast pace of reading through them. I simultaneously wanted to read more and pause between each so I could appreciate each story fully. The pacing and order of the stories could have helped by alternating short pieces with longer ones instead of having a string of very short stories all in a row. All the same, it's a wonderful collection of highly unique pieces by an author working competently within her own idiom, and I enjoyed it immensely.
Shop indie!
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