I'd heard a lot about this short story over the years, but only today actually read it for myself. And I'm quite surprisedI wish I could convince you.
I'd heard a lot about this short story over the years, but only today actually read it for myself. And I'm quite surprised. Not by Le Guin's deftness and wit—that much is a given with any of her work—but by other people's reviews of this. So many seem to believe that it's about how people are exploited; how our own comfort depends on the misery of others; the price of happiness. I think the brilliance of this work is in the fact that it isn't about those things at all—it's about how deeply we believe them to be true.
Le Guin describes a beautiful, idealistic society in the seaside city of Omelas and then, anticipating our disbelief, introduces misery and exploitation. She even mentioned earlier our "bad habit of considering happiness as something rather stupid." But because we cannot be content with a happy, peaceful, joyous society—because it seems unattainable and therefore false—Le Guin shows us cruelty, and we respond by saying, "Ah yes, just like real life."
But the point isn't the cruelty. The point is how difficult it is for us to accept unadulterated happiness that we need that cruelty, if only narratively.
Also of note is the story's title. It is not called simply "Omelas" (or, not now, at least, though that may have been its original title)—it is called "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." And these people who see the starving, abused child and choose to leave, where do they go? Our narrator "cannot describe it at all." Perhaps because they go to a true utopia, to an Omelas where there is no child in the cellar, and it cannot be described because a social system where widespread joy is possible without the suffering of others is literally inconceivable to us. That's the true horror of this story. Not a tormented fictional child. The idea that a truly thriving society is, for many of us, impossible to even imagine....more
This is a fantastic quartet of novellas/short stories. I've reviewed each of them individually below, without spoilers. Common themes of gender perforThis is a fantastic quartet of novellas/short stories. I've reviewed each of them individually below, without spoilers. Common themes of gender performativity, relationships bonded by loneliness, and community that is imperfect but necessary (plus how trying to stick to social prescriptions of sex and gender isolate you from said community).
It's worth noting that two of these stories ("Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones" and "The Masker") appear to have been published previously, so if you're a big Torrey Peters fan, keep that in mind.
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Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones: 4/5
I really enjoyed this story. The back-and-forth vignettes work very well, unfolding the nature of the main character's relationship with her friend/lover/enemy/ally. Both Lexi and our nameless protagonist feel exceptionally well-drawn and realistic; I never questioned their motives even when they did terrible things. In fact, I came out of the story with a profound tenderness towards them both.
The world-building is clunky—the story starts with a big info-dump—but it's a forgivable flaw in an otherwise well-done piece. I believe this was first published in 2016, and I can't believe how prescient it is: transness and pandemics and the power of community amidst a crumbling world.
The Chaser: 4/5
Vivid and brutal. My main complaint is that Peters initially commits to the voice of a teenage boy, but very soon it unravels because she wants to plumb her narrator's inner world and seems to find the chosen voice too limiting—so he starts talking in an unconvincingly eloquent way about his own masculinity.
Even if the vocabulary has a ring of falseness (and you can hand-wave that away by saying he's reflecting on these events several years after they've happened) this is a harrowing and deeply layered story. I liked how the narrator never fully understood the nature of his own desires, never really came to terms with why he wanted what he wanted—how many of us can explain our fetishes or preferences, much less in high school, when they're both overwhelming and nebulous? The tension, drama, and inner turmoil of adolescence combined with the confusion and potency of socially forbidden desire. There's a lot to chew on.
Stag Dance: 3/5
This is probably my favorite narrator so far, he's a delight. His quiet, resigned frustrations about his appearance are heartbreaking; his thwarted quest for womanhood, doomed as it is from the start, is beautiful. (One particular scene involving his communion with a fabric triangle is downright transcendent.) It's much more than a straightforward trans narrative, illuminating the fact that whole swaths of human experience—emotional vulnerability, the joy of vanity, being pursued, being held—are inaccessible to men who adhere rigidly to their social roles. This gender subversion in an all-male environment reminded me of a nonfiction book I read a while ago, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition that always draws comments when people see it on my bookshelf at home.
So where does this story go wrong? Well, it's clear that Peters has done her homework on nineteenth century timber piracy, and man, is she just dying to tell you about it. I liked this setting, but no modern reader is going to understand even a fraction of the jargon she uses here, so at times it felt like a poorly-disguised research paper on logging in the 1800s.
And, for the length of this novella, it never really gets off the ground. It could've been so much tighter and punchier. The ending felt unfinished as well—ultimately, I think this one just needed more time in the editing stage.
The Masker: 5/5
Torrey Peters is so good at characterization. The main character in this story and the two people she's caught between are all distinct, yet similarly lonely, flawed, grasping. Sally, a been-around-the-block trans woman who makes our protagonist Krys face the terrifying possibilities of transition—of not passing, of coming out, of potential lifelong social rejection—and Felix, a warped figure pulled straight from Krys' masturbatory fantasies, who promises her that she can trade her dignity and identity for sexual gratification and adoration.
I love this story not just for its wonderfully simple and devastating plot, with several stomach-sinking moments and an ending I'll never forget, but because it investigates something I've never seen represented on page or screen: sissies. They are ubiquitous in the kink world, and yet, as BDSM trickles piecemeal into the mainstream, you hear nothing about this confusing breed, caught halfway between crossdressers and trans women. I'm still torn myself on whether to feel sympathy for their ostracism, feminist outrage at their fetishisation of misogyny, or allyship with their gender fuckery. I think Peters' treatment of sissies here is both sincere and, in keeping with the rest of this collection, brutally tragic....more
Great little piece of low science fiction featuring a racist punk trying to spread fatal memetic images. The storytelling felt natural and, even thougGreat little piece of low science fiction featuring a racist punk trying to spread fatal memetic images. The storytelling felt natural and, even though it was interspersed with segments from memos, not at all infodump-y.
A perfectly dramatic short story in which a man learns the difference between opportunism and monomania. The vehicle for this psychological exploratioA perfectly dramatic short story in which a man learns the difference between opportunism and monomania. The vehicle for this psychological exploration? Chess, of course, which our unnamed narrator aptly describes thusly:
...a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras...
Those black and white squares are enough to drive a man mad.
I really enjoyed this collection of stories. The flap copy describes the running theme as women's "thwarted attempts at intimacy", and I think that's I really enjoyed this collection of stories. The flap copy describes the running theme as women's "thwarted attempts at intimacy", and I think that's a pretty good way to put it. Marriage is thoroughly skewered in My Husband, as every story shows a new and horrifying way that miscommunication, contempt, disgust, despair, or fear can cause a couple's (or a family's) downfall.
There's a deep psychological fissure at the heart of each of these stories. A husband's cruelty, a wife's overweening vanity, a mother's deep distrust of her own young son. They're all well-written but not ornate, just very elegant and sleek pieces of fiction, chilling and unsettling.
Children, friends, and, of course, the reader are all caught up in the wake of these black-hole couplings, and you'll probably find yourself glad (as I was) that this is such a short book.
Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. I liked the prose and the inner world of the protagonist, his thoughts were characterised in a way that felt natural Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. I liked the prose and the inner world of the protagonist, his thoughts were characterised in a way that felt natural and easy to understand but still unformed and vague in the way thoughts are. There’s this ineffable quality, though, that makes it feel like a larger story that was severely edited down, and I get this sensation that the edges are tattered where things have been ripped away....more
I love a short story packed with subtext, and this does the job quite well. I wish there were a little more to it but this is probably my favourite piI love a short story packed with subtext, and this does the job quite well. I wish there were a little more to it but this is probably my favourite piece of Adichie’s I’ve read so far....more
This starts off promisingly enough, but eventually it’s as though Chambers completely runs out of ideas for cosmic horror and just thinks, “Well, I guThis starts off promisingly enough, but eventually it’s as though Chambers completely runs out of ideas for cosmic horror and just thinks, “Well, I guess I’ll just write vague microfiction¹... or maybe a war story?² Oh god, I still have so many pages to fill... uh... what about romance!³”
So, needless to say, shit goes off the rails pretty quickly. Chambers loses sight entirely of the central thread he’d been following; several stories in the second half of the collection feature no disturbing elements or references to The King in Yellow at all, which is a shame, because I love the idea of this eldritch book being a sort of mind virus that infects the subconscious of any who read it.
Skip this one. If you’d like a taste of the best Chambers has to offer, the only two stories worth reading are “The Mask” and “The Yellow Sign.”
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¹ “The Prophets’ Paradise”
² “The Street of the First Shell”
³ “The Street of Our Lady of the Fields” and “Rue Barée”...more
I truly despise these New Yorker short stories that can’t muster up a plot or compelling tension and so just wallow about in upper-middle-class malaisI truly despise these New Yorker short stories that can’t muster up a plot or compelling tension and so just wallow about in upper-middle-class malaise for pages upon pages. It may be fashionable to write boring lit-fic about miserable people that doesn’t actually go anywhere—but that doesn’t make it profound. ...more
This collection gets off to a rough start, because in my opinion, the first two stories (“The Bounds of Reason” & “A Shard of Ice”) are also the worstThis collection gets off to a rough start, because in my opinion, the first two stories (“The Bounds of Reason” & “A Shard of Ice”) are also the worst. I was feeling very worried about the direction it was headed in (hence why it took me so long to finish this...) but luckily, after those two duds, all the stories that follow are incredibly engaging and well-told.
I’ve added a little mini-review of each story in my progress notes, but as a whole, I think I actually like this better than The Last Wish. That collection was much more fairytale-inspired and as such had a harder time breaking out of its shell to become something original instead of yet another collection of Grimm reimaginings. Sword of Destiny, on the other hand, really feels at home in its world, and its stories feel like fresh premises rather than slight twists on familiar concepts. The best thing it accomplishes is further characterising Geralt: he shines consistently and proves that Sapkowski has created possibly the perfect fantasy protagonist.
My favourite piece is probably “Eternal Flame,” which is much lighter in tone and content than the rest of the stories here but still thoughtful nonetheless. “A Little Sacrifice” is a close second. I find that I tend to enjoy the “one-off” stories more, that is to say the ones that don’t focus on recurring characters or problems which will reappear in future volumes, but general witchery adventures which incorporate and underscore the topics that run through all of these short stories, and the ones in The Last Wish too: destiny, modernity, humanity....more
This is a decent enough story which felt torn between sharp, visceral prose and formal, ornate diction. I didn’t think it was particularly clever, whiThis is a decent enough story which felt torn between sharp, visceral prose and formal, ornate diction. I didn’t think it was particularly clever, which wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t come with this aura of readers claiming it’s a work of genius. I think I’m learning that I don’t have much patience for short stories with twist endings, I think mostly they’re cheap exercises in legerdemain, but I can’t deny there are some nice turns of phrase here—for some reason I really liked this quote in particular: “The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.”
Told with all the dreaminess of Borges and all the madness of Poe, Aura is a neat little novella that plays with concepts of time, obsession, and desiTold with all the dreaminess of Borges and all the madness of Poe, Aura is a neat little novella that plays with concepts of time, obsession, and desire. Think "The Circular Ruins" meets "The Fall of the House of Usher." The narrative is remarkably fluid and unsettling, perfectly capturing the sensation of becoming unglued, unmoored.
This bilingual edition features a facing translation—the original Spanish on the verso and Lysander Kemp's English interpretation on the recto. Kemp's translation is solid, from what I could see; any excisions he made were to keep the English and Spanish texts roughly in line on the page and I don't think any meaning was lost. The only weird thing is that in one instance he translates "tres mil" to "four thousand," but then later the original text switches, when referring to the same thing, to "cuatro mil." So it's probably a [sic] situation where Kemp was trying to rectify an error in the original Spanish. Anyway, facing translations are super cool and this is a great piece for it, as it's short and tight and easily readable in both languages, with its arresting second-person present tense.
In short story collections, I think it's actually the second story, not the first, which is the most important. The first story is deliberately placedIn short story collections, I think it's actually the second story, not the first, which is the most important. The first story is deliberately placed; it's the stunner, the one the author knows will knock the reader off their feet. But when you get to the story after that, that's when you'll really know whether this person can really write or whether that one great opener was just a one-off.
The titular first story of The Corpse Exhibition is an interesting little morsel, pretty and mysterious and a little grotesque. And then you get to that all-important second story ("The Compass and the Killers"), and it was so horribly dreadful it made me put the book down for three days. Pushing on, that was definitely the low point and not an indicator for where the collection as a whole was headed, but it still took the wind out of my sails a bit.
Hassan Blasim's style reminds me of a mix of Horacio Quiroga and Roberto Bolaño—the former because of his tendency to focus on mad, hallucinatory, and troubled figures, and the latter due to his use of politically-tinged metaphor... though Blasim isn't nearly as good as either of those authors. His wilder bouts of surrealism seem to be inserted for no real reason, like in the story "A Thousand and One Knives," which deals with a group of people who have the specific and useless talent of being able to make knives disappear and reappear with their minds. Nothing is revealed over the course of the story, nothing much changes, we don't view this gift differently in the end as we did in the beginning. It's just a nothing story.
Not every story is a bust, though. I enjoyed "The Song of the Goats" and "The Iraqi Christ," two pieces which are grounded more thoroughly in reality. They definitely involve unlikely events, but nothing occurs in either story which is totally absurd or surreal as in others. They feel like legends rather than fairytales—improbable, certainly, but unshakeably true. "The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes" is also a great closing story, incorporating surrealism and horror with its social themes in a wonderful way.
There's talent here, but unfortunately the stories are off much more than they're on, and no one piece is so remarkable that it makes the whole collection worth reading.
2025 Edit: Just finished my reread of this since I'm starting the Witcher series in earnest and wanted to refresh my memory of the stories. Sapkowski 2025 Edit: Just finished my reread of this since I'm starting the Witcher series in earnest and wanted to refresh my memory of the stories. Sapkowski is very good at similes, I noticed this time—a guardsman is "as bald as a knee"; Geralt knocks someone out and their legs "fold like penknives." I still agree that "A Grain of Truth" is the weakest story of the bunch, though the core idea is fun.
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This book was just what I needed: a fun, engaging fantasy novel to help pull me from the mire of serious realistic fiction. It's well-translated (not always an easy thing!), interesting, and best of all, readable.
I think we give too little credit to readability. Oftentimes when we reviewers call a book readable, we use it as a sort of shorthand way to say: the author's prose is nothing to write home about, but it's lean and unobtrusive enough to propel the story forward. Not incredible, not bad, you know, readable. But readability is actually a rather impressive thing. It means the author can write in a way that isn't clumsy, that's well-paced, that keeps the reader interested. It makes the act of reading effortless, eases our transition into the world of fiction. It's almost like what they say about good design: when an object has been designed to perfection, you shouldn't even notice its design at all, it should just feel intuitive and perfect; the designer fades away. And a book that's very readable is much the same: the author disappears into the background and the story comes to us nearly fully-formed, unmarred by unnecessarily ornate prose. So when I say The Last Wish is readable, please know this is what I mean—Sapkowski's writing isn't going to win a Pulitzer anytime soon but it's slick and it does a perfect job of telling the story and evoking the characters, and honestly after so much artfulness in the past few novels I've read, it was a joy.
So, about the book itself, you may be suspicious of the (#0.5) next to the title, as I was. Best as I can figure without doing any research (who's got time for that?) this is a collection of the short stories that propelled Sapkowski to fame, all of which revolve around the adventures of one Geralt of Rivia: the stories here are "The Witcher," "A Grain of Truth," "The Lesser Evil," "A Question of Price," "The Edge of the World," and "The Last Wish." They don't directly connect to each other in any way I can discern and they're all pretty temporally vague, but they're linked together in this volume by short chapters titled "The Voice of Reason," which acts as a sort of frame narrative. While each story is distinct and they're all pretty good (except "A Grain of Truth," which is rather weak), they all involve Geralt travelling somewhere, usually connecting with someone he already knows, getting involved in a local problem, and almost inevitable winding up in a wrestling match if not a downright swordfight with some manner of monster. So this is more of a prelude to the series itself, presumably introducing its themes and some of its recurring characters, but not actually kicking off any conflicts which aren't resolved.
And what is this "witcher" business, anyway? (Or wiedźmin, in the original Polish.) Well, witchers are basically monster slayers, since the universe Sapkowski has created has no shortage of monsters: vampires, giant insects, kobolds, trolls, werewolves, they all exist. Witchers are a kind of a cross between mercenaries (they don't work for free), hunters (they use much of the same skills, trapping, tracking, bait, etc.), and knights (the whole roaming the land with a sword and steed and helping the innocent thing).
Geralt, as a witcher, is a sort of perversion of the traditional fairy tale knight hero. Pretty much everywhere he goes, people greet him with either suspicion, disdain, fear, or open hostility. See, he's not just a monster hunter. At one point in this book, a character asks Geralt if he's human, to which he replies: "Not quite." Witchers gain their extraordinary strength and speed (as well as minor magic ability) through extensive mutation. Their bodies don't work like normal human bodies: they can change their blood pressure at will, dilate their eyes to see in the dark, they heal quickly. And they're not born—they're made. Witchers make more witchers by taking children (presumably willingly, though this isn't very clear) and subjecting them to gruelling, painful mutations and "experiments" which kill many or even most of them. Those that survive are trained until adulthood and presto, a witcher: ready to face the public's contempt.
I was surprised by how much I liked Geralt. There's an inherent tragedy in being a witcher, a sort of lost child, not knowing your parents and making a living off of blood and death. But Geralt's no emo sadboi, he does a pretty admirable job of taking things as they come. And he makes plenty of mistakes, which is always welcome in a protagonist; how else am I gonna be able to relate to a six foot tall monster slayer who beds every woman he meets?
Speaking of women, Yennefer is only introduced in the final (titular) story, but I loved her too. She's such a domme. She's arrogant, intelligent, calculating, powerful—often attributes authors will only give to male characters. She's scheming and spiteful and could easily become a cheap villain but Sapkowski makes the much more interesting decision to ally her with the hero and let us get to know her. I don't know how much she'll appear in the books to come, but I look forward to it.
Lastly, the world. We don't learn very much about it from these stories alone, just the names of places and rulers that didn't mean much to me, but there are humans, elves, and dwarves (and gnomes, are they different?) all living here. There's some racial tension in one of the stories, "The Edge of the World," and considering the second book in the series is called Blood of Elves I'm guessing that will be further expanded upon. It speaks to a realism that Sapkowski takes pains to make clear in these stories—even though this is fantasy, he tries to make it feel as real as possible by including all the warts. The humour here is often rooted in a very real sense of darkness.
So consider this an endorsement! This book was just what the doctor ordered, a thrilling reprieve from the rest of my global challenge... which I may have to put on hold for a bit to pursue the rest of this series.
So I’m eight books deep in my challenge to read a book from every country in the world, and for Poland I was planning on reading Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk, which is very highly acclaimed and won the Nobel Prize for Literature and seemed a good representation of Poland’s turbulent history and national identity. But my library didn’t have it and Thriftbooks didn’t have it and there was a very small voice in my soul asking: do you even actually want to read this book?
The answer: no. Maybe it’s the tone of the blurb, which seems undefinably pretentious, but I read stuff like
Told in short bursts of "Time," the narrative takes the form of a stylized fable, an epic allegory about the inexorable grind of time and the clash between modernity (the masculine) and nature (the feminine) in which Poland's tortured political history from 1914 to the contemporary era and the episodic brutality visited on ordinary village life is played out.
and I just felt filled with dread despite the glowing reviews and incredibly high average rating. Maybe that sounds thrilling to you, and if it does I’m glad, but when I stop trying to be a “good reader” and really look myself in the eyes, I realise that Jesus Christ I really am not in the mood for an epic allegory about the inexorable grind of time, even (especially?) if it won the Nobel Prize.
The voice in my soul was growing stronger, and it said: I really just wanna read about dragons and stuff.
I’ve been in the weeds of realistic fiction for quite some time now, mostly having a good time, but I just checked my reading log and I realised it’s been over a year since I read any sci-fi or fantasy (excluding Roadside Picnic, which I didn’t like and therefore don’t really count). I long for worldbuilding, magic, monsters, curses, anything beyond our regular boring world. So I decided to listen to my heart and switch my pick from Tokarczuk to Sapkowski, and start the most well-known fantasy series to come out of Poland: The Witcher. Better yet, my beautiful local library had a copy of The Last Wish just waiting for me.
Read in Hay Festival Press’ lovely little bound printing of two of Morpurgo’s (non-illustrated) stories: “Meeting Cézanne” and “Half a Man.” This is aRead in Hay Festival Press’ lovely little bound printing of two of Morpurgo’s (non-illustrated) stories: “Meeting Cézanne” and “Half a Man.” This is a sweet, simple story that reads like a recollection....more
Read in Hay Festival Press’ lovely little bound printing of two of Morpurgo’s (non-illustrated) stories: “Meeting Cézanne” and “Half a Man.” This is tRead in Hay Festival Press’ lovely little bound printing of two of Morpurgo’s (non-illustrated) stories: “Meeting Cézanne” and “Half a Man.” This is the better of the two, I think; more emotionally complex....more
You know, I quite like it. The story itself could easily become a saccharine morality tale of told by anyone else, but it’s so earnest and vividly remYou know, I quite like it. The story itself could easily become a saccharine morality tale of told by anyone else, but it’s so earnest and vividly remembered you can’t help but warm to it....more
It’s hard to describe, but Capote’s way of telling these stories from his childhood is very... verbal. That’s not the right word, there’s definitely aIt’s hard to describe, but Capote’s way of telling these stories from his childhood is very... verbal. That’s not the right word, there’s definitely a word for it, but what I mean to say is that it feels much more like you’re being spoken to than reading words on a page. Something about the casual way of the telling and the use of punctuation and sentence structure makes you feel like Truman has pulled you aside and gone “Did I ever tell you about that time...” And it feels natural, like he’s reliving the events right along with you, but not scattered, like he’s told this story a million times and knows exactly where to do an impression or pause dramatically or shake his head.
The effect it produces is powerful: genuine and intimate. It’s a rare gift to be able to spin tales this way without it feeling hokey or like a put-on. And I can’t explain it but it just feels cosy, even among the sadness that lingers at the edges of this story....more