by Pasha Malla
ISBN: 9781593762384
This big fat collection of stories (thirteeen stories clocking in at just over three hundred pages) surprised me, not always in a good way.
I like odd. Strange doesn’t put me off, it usually pulls me in, unless it is just strange for the sake of being strange in that too clever by half way. I’m not saying Malla is doing that (I don’t think he is) but I don’t really believe all the way through every story, either. For example, “The Slough” takes a major turn halfway through — which I could follow, and made sense, and I suppose might have made the narrative more interesting by adding a twist — but I liked it less afterward, when it was less weird.
Malla captures painful awkwardness and too-knowing-but-not-really childhood (“Pushing Oceans In and Pulling Oceans Out”) and the anger and confusion of twentysomething adulthood (“Being Like Bulls”) whether or not he incorporates fantastic elements. Perhaps that is, perversely, part of what disappointed me with this book: I was expecting more consistent use of the fantastic (the shedding skin, the world with a dry Niagara Falls). That doesn’t mean the other stories aren’t good — they are, I think — just that they weren’t quite what I was expecting, and so were a bit less magical than I probably otherwise would have found them.
I’ll probably give this another read at some point. I wonder if I’ll find the collection less distant somehow. I liked the book, but I expected to love it.
