Eyes Guts Throat Bones: Featuring the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year 2023

by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

'ONE OF MY FAVOURITE STORYTELLERS. THESE TALES LINGERED, MORPHED, CONSUMED ME'
KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE

What will the end of the world look like?
Will it be an old man slowly turned to gold, flowers raining from the sky, or a hole cut through the wire fencing that keeps the monsters out?
Is it someone you love wearing your face, or a good old fashioned inter-dimensional summoning?
Does it sound like a howl outside the window, or does it look like coming home?
This startling and irresistibly witty collection from the phenomenally talented Moïra Fowley is an exploration of all our darkest impulses and deepest fears.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Queer, Fiction, Lesbian, LGBT, Fantasy

292 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 13, 2023

About the author

Moïra Fowley is half-French, half-Irish and made of equal parts feminism, whimsy and Doc Martens. She lives in Dublin where she writes magic realism, reads tarot cards and raises witch babies.

Reviews

[inciminci]

Moïra Fowley’s stories orbit around themes like motherhood, coming of age / girls growing up, and again and again sapphic love and relationships. The depicted intimacy between the characters creeping through each story was especially moving. I generally enjoyed these, although they are also quite similar in tone so much so that later the book turns almost a little monotonous.

Accordingly, I loved the stories that stood out for me; the touching, world-defying relationship in Flowers; The Summoning in which a hot demon was summoned for revenge purposes but she’s so hot it only distracts the summoner, and The Carrier with a disturbing and grotesque baby and a mother sacrificing her body for it.

The cover is so gorgeous 😍...

[Robin]

If you like your horror short, your stories queer, and your book covers gorg, Eyes Guts Throat Bones really is That Bitch. This is one of the best short story collections I have ever read. It consumed me.

Each of these stories brought something to the table, the tales excellently rendered, the concepts crisp, the prose succulent. They were each delectable morsels of depravity and yearning. So much yearning. And so many ways in which one's aching affection can turn monstrous. How the act of loving can be beautiful yet grotesque.

If you like your horror pretty, if you’re a sucker for the writing styles of Alix E. Harrow or Julie Armfield, definitely check out Eyes Guts Throat Bones and fall maddeningly in love with it as I have.

[Jo]

‘I had always loved watching you eat. You did it with such abandon, neck arched, eyes half-closed, an almost erotic act. You loved food, and through your enjoyment I learnt to love it too.’
.
It’s rare when it happens, but I just need a second to put together my thoughts about what I just finished reading. Although I’m 100% sure this is a collection of (I could say) horror short stories, it somehow felt like poetry? Like I was reading someone’s most intimate thoughts or entries in a diary, it had me blushing at times and almost crying - so beautifully written that it didn’t bother me at all to read about the end of the world or the ghost of Stephen Gately.
.
Trust me, you need to read it to fully understand my ramblings, I know I’m not making much sense, but you’ll see I’m actually right! I’m kind of in love with the writing style, so you need to fall in love with it too.
.
What would you do if you knew tomorrow will be the end of the world?

[Leap through the pages Coffee and Commentary]

A dark, sensual series of sapphic love stories against the backdrop of various apocalypses. Honestly discussing motherhood, friendship, and aging, this collection is an intimate look at sacrifice, love, and the devastatingly beautiful experience of being seen. From haunting to humorous to heartbreaking, each story journeys deep into the heart, navigating scars, holes, the ghosts of another’s touch. Surreal and memorable, with gorgeously thoughtful prose, this is a collection that is sure to impact those who ruminate on the end of the world, and what that means for the fragile bonds built during life.

[hawk]

I really enjoyed this collection 😃

"a collection of short stories about queer female bodies and the end of the word" 😁

there are fifteen short stories. short stories that were both short enough, but not too short. I was impressed with how much was created within the short spaces.

I enjoyed the writing and language, turns of phrase, and I loved the imagery 😊
I liked the blending of our collectively (mostly) agreed reality with the fantastical, and the blurring of those lines 😊


🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟



❗❗ beware spoilers ❗❗

🌟 if you think you might read this collection, probably best to skip the individual story comments - I give way too much away, and it'll spoil any potential surprise 🌟

❗❗ beware spoilers ❗❗



🍪 What would you give for a treat like me. 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
a story told in snatches of present and past, piecing together clues wrt what's happened... a small group of people travelling on foot (away from what, and to what?), unusual and unpredictable transformations along the way.

musings on children, parenthood, wanting/not wanting children - a couple negotiating that, the extra layers to this as LGBTQI folk.

and the language used around infants and children - "couldn't you just take a bite out of that" - and an interesting play on this 🙂

"it's not too late [...] women have always had children as the world ended"
balanced against:
"what kind of a world is this to bring a baby into"

the story also an exploration of love and a relationship. of different childhoods, relationships with food.

a rather delicious tale 😉
grim, full of threat, but of a strange sort 😁


🌺 Flowers.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
small town life, the mobile library, the bus to bigger towns. Catholic Ireland.
being different.

a city kid, with a single mam, comes to stay in town. the whirlwind of young lesbian love 🙂 Tess and Aoimer (? spelled by ear). and the dramatic meteorological events that happen around them 😃

a gentle, tho brutal in places, exploration of LGBTQI sexuality in a small town.

this one evoked songs - especially Sinead O'Connor, whose music was mentioned in the story ♥


🎨 Nature morte.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
took me a while to get past the reader's delivery and hear the story. it turned out to be a very nicely complex story about love and loss and grief 💔 as it closed, I enjoyed being able to see how all the initially disparate-seeming threads drew together, kinda in parallel with the new paintings taking shape/body/form on the canvas.

frequent mentions of 'the monster', and increasingly we learn that other people are aware of it, ask after it... tho the narration doesn't give it any clear external form until the end.


👤 Such a pretty face.
🌟 🌟 🌟🌟 +
Louie and Mina, Teagan, Rob and his boyfriend, at a party. Louie is new in town, and their new housemate...

something very itchy and scratchy permeates, tho just with a few words here and there. something trying to get under the skin, and/or out from under the skin.
as more is revealed, little is a surprise - something obvious from the start, tho that's not necessarily a bad thing. and whether there'll be a turn around/twist in/to this tale/time 🙂


☠ Only corpses stay.
🌟 🌟 🌟
this story initially felt abit like the first story - starting in the middle, a hike to and from somewhere undefined, after what sounds like some kind of apocalyptic event, tho little is explained.
kids leading kids, having grown in this environment, learned the necessary skills, teaching them to the younger kids. the groups of kids continually making quarterly marches between outposts, reuniting at them, never staying at one too long - only corpses stayed.

intimacy is not encouraged, fighting sometimes being the only touch. tho not the only - June and Mhara as friends/childhood loves, later June and Keira as more adult lovers. the story moves back and fro between the two pairings, past and present - the loss of Mhara a decade previously.

this was bit of a sad story, with a different energy to the others, dragging abit in its slow sadness. I felt the slow sadness was also the characters' kinda loss of desire to continue 😥


😈 The summoning. 🌟
this one was so annoying to listen to - it sounded like it had been speeded up, kinda squeaky and way too fast.
the main character and the narrative were annoying too - all fast and high, and all 'hot demon, but not that I'm into girls'. incredibly repetitive and inane 😬
Katie and her friend/boyfriend have summoned an "interdimensional demon from some kind of hellworld".
the encounter isn't what either the demon and Katie are expecting. the demon is kinda cool.


⚔ Wrath 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
two girls, Ellie and Trina, best friends, up on the hill of 'The Wrath' at midsummer.
shifts within their friendship/relationship as they move thru their teenage years, navigating life and loves, changing friendship groups. into their adult lives, across geographical distance, relationships, marriage and children.

The Wrath as a being and narrator too within the story, "so much more than a haunting". telling another tale of two women, warrior queens and lovers...

"they buried her standing and slowly she reaches for air"
"thousands of years of echoes until these two kissed between thistles and I recognised them, and little by little I rose". 😃😁♥


🌟🎶🎺INTERVAL 🎺🎶🌟

initially I was tickled that the book maybe had an interval!? 😃 it was a story, titled 'Interval..'. tho also an interval wrt the rest of the queer stories 😉😁

🌟🎶🎺INTERVAL 🎺🎶🌟


🎭 Interval sad straight sex at the end of the world.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
opens as a stage set, with direction, description of a hotel room, placement of characters, man, woman, mundane actions, and we hear their thoughts.
it's the last night of the world and they are going to have sex 😉

"it's like a checklist..."
"I didn't think this would feel so lonely"
"maybe this was a mistake"

only as the world ends, it's sounds outside, they start to talk to each other, share something of their lives.
then we're back to their distance and internal thoughts. more noises off, and they speak again.

more rumbles, the rubble of the hotel room is revealed, the world has ended yet the two of them are still alive, they're the last two people left...
"the curtains close on their stricken faces" 🤣

brilliantly scripted, sad and hilarious 😃😆😁


🦠 The carrier. 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
nicely creepy, kinda body horror, and also very humorous 🙂

pregnancy, tho also a more general sense of something growing inside... parasites are woven in with tangents about cats and toxoplasmosis, the carrier wasp, beings lulled into doing things by the parasite 😯🙂

I really enjoyed, and related to, the strange horror of pregnancy and how the infant consumes it's birth giver 🙂


🌞 Big round ball of light and the water. 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
I didn't necessarily follow everything in this story, but very much appreciated its writing and rhythm and skill. it was intensely descriptive 😍😊

relative isolation (the journey between the mainland and island feels both large and small). tho relative also because they sound like a full household, a religious community - a man, seven sisters/wives, five babs, and various animals...

the need is referred to as the need of the island, fulfilled by the inhabitants.
the significance and/or spirituality of the number seven.

I liked the sense of shifting sexuality and gender amongst the wives. and the suggestion of things, tho much was left unsaid.

I found this story very atmospheric wrt the island and it's surrounds, and the experiences and relationships described 😊


📚 Saying it's name breaks it.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
riddles and tales, including playing with and mixing Alice in wonderland, Jack and the beanstalk, and more, into our consensus reality. the story abit of a riddle in itself 🙂

a small group of people working in the library, the interactions between them. the library and books are almost characters too. sleeping in the library with the books, and each other. power and the lack of it - electrical, and personal.


🎤 A different beat.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
opens with the ghost of Steven Gately (Boyzone iirc), and two girls/friends, Kate and Jenny, browsing magazines in a shop. the Spice Girls in posters on her sisters wall, and her response to them...

a sweet story of early adolescence, and sexuality 🙂


📷 Break up, home recited (knee deep in bog water).
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
sex and/within a relationship, told in Polaroid photos, art and tarot 😁 and the bog... 💚


📝 Two truths and a lie.
🌟 🌟 🌟+
interestingly written, exactly as the title states. two girls/young women (and a doll), sexuality, self harm. a little creepy 🙂


🏠 Playing house.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
two parallel narratives, held by one character - a couple moving into their own house, and one of that couple later carrying that house inside her. the weight of what we carry, the weight of memories. and what a house, and a home, is.

I especially enjoyed the conversation with the fox 😁
and the squirrel 🙂 and the hare, who has only the road,
the red rusty road ♥😊


🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟


I loved the collection overall. I was really surprised by the one story part way through that I didn't like at all, nor found easy to appreciate on any level. but otherwise I thought it was brilliant collection 😃😁 and it very much fulfilled its blurb in a nice variety of ways 😁😊

will look forward to hopefully reading more by the author 🙂


🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟


accessed as an RNIB audiobook read by Lisa Swaney/Sweaney and Jennifer Fitzgerald.
one narrator was better than the other, tho I'm not sure which was which.

[Briar Page]

Loved a lot of these genre-bending lesbian stories ("Rath", "Such a pretty face", "Nature morte", and "Big round ball of light and the water" are standouts), and liked the ones I thought were a little weaker. MFD's easily one of my favorite contemporary/recent YA authors, and it's exhilarating to see her expand her talent to fiction for adults. She's very good at writing erotic and grotesque scenes, a skill which is played down in favor of her more whimsical side in her books for teenagers. These stories have plenty of whimsy, but it's coupled with intense body horror, subdued evocations of melancholic nostalgia & grief, or the end of the world/collapse of society.

[RatGrrrl]

Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Sam Fowley


It's been a week since I finished this and I still have no idea what to say.


This creepy, gorgeous, heartbreaking, hilarious, disgusting, soul destroying, exquisitely beautiful sapphic collection took a sledgehammer to my chest and carved itself on the bloody ruins of my heart. 


It is a crime that no-one had previously forced me to read this! 


Since the various coming outs and other colossal tectonic shifts over the course of my 30s there have been many landmark moments of life leaving fundamentally and permanently changed forever. Reading Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Sam Fowley was absolutely one of them.


I don't know how to accurately portray just how much I utterly adored every single story in this collection!


I absolutely love fucked up story collections, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez, Your Utopia by Bora Chung, Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Augustina Bazterrica, to name but a few of my favourites, but none made me want to tattoo every word on my body (with the exception of Sad Straight Sex at the End of the World) [although, absolutely the "My sister’s best friend’s a lesbian" soliloquy].


What would you give for a treat like me


Apocalyptic folk relationship nightmare excellence 

As I said in my update on the various reading apps - “What an opening story!!!”


Flowers


Words cannot express how much I fucking love this story and how I couldn't have been in a more perfect place to read it. 

Reading update “Damb. Sapphic love do be like that though :D”

My girlfriend after me sending her countless quotes: “Wtf!!! How is that book actually about us???” 

I wrote a poem inspired by it and something Abbie once said about flowers. 


Roses 

After Flowers by Sam Fowley and for Abbie


I haven't eaten for days 

My stomach is filled 

With black and white 

And purple and yellow 

Roses 

The red ones are too obvious 

Uninspired 

Each morning I awake 

To a mouthful of petals

And a head full of ideas 

So few for public consumption 

And yet, my cup runneth over 

My notebook 

Is filled with thorns

And smeared with sap 


Nature morte


Subtly, agonisingly harrowing and gorgeously hopeful.

Reading update “God, this book is achingly, horrifyingly beautiful!” 


Such a pretty face 


Deliciously depraved and sickeningly sweet. 


Only corpses stay 


Extremely hot and heartbreaking. 

Finished reading it while body doubling with my girlfriend at her work and almost had an emotional breakdown. I needed a big hug after this. 

Reading update “OK. Only corpses stay. Fucked me up. Damb” 


The summoning 


Absolutely ridiculous in, like, a really fun and totally silly way. But also, like, bloody, beautiful, and incredibly hot. 

Truly a triumph of committing to the bit! 


Rath 


Fuck me, this hit on so many levels! So unbelievably fucking real and relatable in a way that ties thousands of years of sapphic agony and ecstacy with the intimate autopsy of the disintegration of a…friendship over a life time. Just. Wow. 

Reading update “This book is going to kill me (complimentary)

Almost sobbing in sodding Costa!”


Interval: Sad Straight Sex at the End of the World


I have no bath, and I must scream. 

This small play fucks in a way the characters do not. 

This quote goes so hard:

“My sister’s best friend’s a lesbian. The way she looked at her wife. I’ve heard they just keep going. Both of them. Until they’re all pleasured out. Climax after climax. Someone has to call it, I’ve heard. Otherwise they’d both just give and receive, give and receive and just keep looking at each other that way forever. Pause. I bet they’ll die happy.”

GF “Yep” 


The carrier


Anthroporphise a nightmare from nature into one of the scariest things humans can experience. 


The whole collection influenced this poem, but this story directly left its mark on the penultimate stanza:

A Pain From Her Heaven


I am so happy 

Beyond content 

Baby shrieking with unbridled joy

On the bus 

Hiccuping laughter 

That sounds like screams 

That sounds like being sick 

Before the tittering

Giggles and burbling 

And screaming 

Again and again and again 

And again 


I'm not even bothered 

By the ridiculous 

Ear-splitting joy

Because as silent as I am

It's vibrating in every cell 

My skin is laughing 

My heart is smiling–

That's not a twee metaphor 

The ragged meat of my heart 

Is warped and convulsing 

With the strength of my ardour 


If anyone had ears to hear 

They would hear the bubbling of my stomach 

Distended with hordes of tiny, white caterpillars

The deafening gale from my guts 

Isn't butterflies 

But a fungal bloom of wool moths 

Tineola bisselliella

Their delicate crochet wings 

Decked out in Autumnal colours 

Spelling 

Love, love, love, 

Love


My intestines have collapsed 

Into gobbets of wool 

Slick and stringy 

Long rainbow tangles of ecstacy 

Swelling and fraying 

Offering no nutrition to my starved system 

On the edge of collapse 

But the gory granny squares 

All spell out her name 


I am gasping for air 

My Eve's apple 

Is a can of peanut brittle 

Exploding with elation 

My trachea is choked 

With rusted springs

And snakes that sink their fangs

Into my pharyngeal veins 

Rupturing arteries 


My body is broken 

Everything breaking down 

Unable to contain this elation 

I genuinely might be dying 

But I've lost the ability to feel

Fear, shame, or anything 

That isn't this exquisite inferno 


Sweat drips from my forehead 

My fingers blacken and twist 

The smell of long pig 

Redolent in melting nostrils 

My eyes burst with poetry 

Sticky, white jelly 

Dripping down my cheeks 

Like tears of joy 

Only to evaporate

As my whole body immolates


My only wish 

Is for you 

To play 

With my ashes 


Big round ball of light and the water


Visceral gothic folk horror with a dark twist. 

The rejection of the subtle and explicit justification for horrors in myth and allegory truly elevates this from a great story into something truly special. 


Saying its name breaks it 


Riddles and breaking down at the end of the world. What more could you ask for? 


A different beat 


A humbler, but no less affecting, echo of Rath focused on a much narrower period of time and the ghosts of repression, sexuality, and pop stars. 


Break-up poem recited knee-deep in bog water


The transubstantiation of soul and sex through Polaroid, poetry, and tarot exquisitely preserved in a bog. The fractal distillation of a relationship’s reflection on slick mud upon the bodies of copulating witches. 

“If this is the end then I am the reverberations of the last bass note. If this is the final footfall then I am the echo. If this is a break-up then I am the poem written six months later. My body and yours: preserved forever in the bog.” 


Two truths and a lie


The intimate horror of emerging sexuality and haunted dolls.


Playing house 


A poetic exploration of the space between fantasy and nightmare, love and heartbeat, animals and people, and the homes that swell and bleed and creak inside us. 

A perfect end to a perfect collection that echoes interestingly with Carmen Maria Machado's Mothers from Her Body and Other Parties (which hit all the harder upon re-reading after reading In The Dream House). 

Sapphic dreams and houses, fantasies and nightmares hold a special bloody, shifting, bleeding, screaming place within us that Fowley and Machado tap into so brilliantly. 

“The house comes out in a slick of blood and fluids. The house has its mother’s eyes. The house was built of breath and bodies. The house is a map. The house is a home. The house is all we need on the long red road.” 


This collection is everything and I can't wait to read it again and again and again. 

Also, I'm not joking about the tattoos. I am genuinely going to be getting some based on Fowley's words and the breathtaking cover art by Micaela Alcaino


***

Sam Fowley is as absolute revelation!

I need time to write a proper review, but this is truly one of the most powerful and breathtaking collections I've ever read and I want every word tattooed on my skin.

[Sadhbh Rubinson]

I was so excited about this pick! Irish author? Completely new to me? Horror + speculative? I honestly thought this would be my perfect collection.

I struggled through a few stories in this collection. I found that the stories I liked, I really liked! Yet, the ones I didn't, I was dragging through. You know that feeling when you're not getting immersed and you're very aware you're reading? That was me for most of this.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what made me feel this way but I'm thinking that these were some factors:
- descriptive, and flowery writing. but like, heavier handed than I prefer. (personal preference)
- using metaphors to describe actions/behavior (not feelings/emotions) I found myself genuinely confused a few times thinking, "wait so she did or didn't do _____"??? where are we? what happened?
- really lacking the horror element. it was a strange collection but the majority of it wasn't scary or suspenseful in my opinion. I think 2-3 of them were.

These components didn't lend well to the short story format. By the time I was used to a writing style the story would be over and the diction/tone would change.

I will say one the BEST things I got out of my read was my FAVORITE title of a story/book EVER! "Break-up Poem Recited Knee-Deep in Bog Water"

2 stars!

[Manoek (manoeksbooknook)]

All the Bad Apples is one of my favourite books of all time and I also love The Spellbook of the Lost and Found. Sapphic horror is one of my favourite subgenres so when I knew that one of my favourite authors was coming out with a sapphic horror short story collection I was so excited and I mean this cover 😍

I'm so glad to say I'm not dissapointed at all. I loved this. As with all short story collections, you will love some more than others, but I still felt like giving this 5 stars. Some stories made me say what the fuck out loud and feel so uncomfortable("Such a pretty face" for example) other stories made me laugh out loud ( "The Summoning" and "Interval:Sad Straight Sex at the end of the world" for example) and other stories made me cry and feel so many emotions. What all of the stories have in common is that they're beautifully written. In very different writing styles.

Some of my favourite stories that will really stick with me were: "Nature Morte", "Only corpses stay", "Rath" and "Big round Ball of Light and Water"

[Maëlys]

I reaaaally wanted to give this 5 stars because I fell in love with the writing but some stories were a little bit weaker for me so even though I still enjoyed them they brought down the rating a little bit. Never mind it's been over a year and I still think about this so much, it's a 5

I couldn’t be more pleased though as this was 100% a cover purchase and I picked it up/put it back down so many times in the bookstore- at the end I couldn’t resist it! whew <3

some of the highlights for me:
What would you give for a treat like me (a perfect introduction to the rest of the collection, a very strong first story that really sucked me in)
Nature Morte (a poignant story on grief)
Such a pretty face (FERAL!!)
Rath (tangled reincarnations/timelines are always delicious to me)
Break up poem recited knee deep in bog water

[excentric]

I think this might be my new favorite book of all time. There wasn't a single story I didn't enjoy and I was so immersed that I had visible reactions to more than a few passages. And by visible I mean people actually asked me what I was reading.

Everything about this collection is gorgeous. The writing is so beautiful I cannot wait to reread this book and underline all of it. There's a perfect amount of love and gore. In some of the stories whenever I felt safe, the author managed to write something so unexpected yet perfectly fitting that made me speechless.

I will not stop recommending this book and my goal is to make every person I know read it.

[milo in the woods]

2.8 stars, rounded down.

EYES
such a pretty face: five stars
the summoning: three stars
a different beat: two stars

GUTS
what would you give for a treat like me: two stars
the carrier: two stars
playing house: two stars

sad straight sex at the end of the world: two stars

THROATS
flowers: three stars
big round ball of light and the water: three stars
saying its name breaks it: three stars
two truths and a lie: two stars

BONES
nature morte: three stars
only corpses stay: four stars
rath: three stars
break-up poem recited knee-deep in bog water: three stars

some of these were a bit compelling, but they because monotonous quickly and felt very one-note. the writing style is not to my taste and i probably won’t read more from this author.

[Charles Edwards-Freshwater]

More 3.5.

I absolutely loved some of these stories and especially appreciated the sapphic nature of them. However, a couple of the tales didnt capture me as much as the others (often the way with collections) whereas some I think would've been fantastic as full length novels/novellas if they'd been given more room to breathe.

Some gorgeous prose though, so can't wait to see what the author releases next!

[aylin]

[4.5/ 5] beautifully written sapphic short story collection ranging from magic realism to scifi to straight up horror, or in other words: what dreams are made of

[Hanneleele]

Head lood, mitte päris õudus, aga kohati natuke sinnapoole. Kehaline. Kväär. Kõik peale loo "sad straight sex at the end of the world" naistevahelisest armastusest ühel või teisel kombel.

Kõige paremini jäi meelde lugu iidsest kääpast, millel üks paar sõpru/vaenlasi/armastajaid käib iga aasta pööriööl kohtumas, sellal kui kääpa seest jälgib toimuvat sinna maetud sõdalaskuninganna, jumalanna, kes oleks kas või kogu maailma verre uputanud, kui talt ta kallim rööviti, aga saadi kätte ja maeti püstijalu. Kummitusi, maailmalõppe, väikeste tüdrukute iha ja julmust ja soonõidade lämmatavat armastust.

[James &#x1f9a4;]

The way this author writes is incredible. If I could rate off of just that alone it would be a five star because wow.

The actual stories are good. Some of them are great, but a lot of them are just good. I think part of that is how extremely personal to the female/wlw experience so many of these are so I was probably missing something reading it as just a dude, but I still really enjoyed it! Definitely leans more into litfic using horror as a medium, but I think that’s really cool and creates some really interesting stories.

[Frankie]

Messy, fleshy, hands-on horror-adjacent short stories. My favourite was Rath, and not everything worked, but it was absolutely worth the lengths I went to procure it. Book math: I keep my exoskeletons to myself by Marisa Crane + Love does not make me gentle or kind by Chavisa Woods

[Frida]

Smukke, forstyrrede og opslugende noveller

[Ashley]

The first time we kissed it rained flowers for a week, beautiful and biblical until the gnats and the worms and the clumps of black soil landed in everybody's hair.

Eyes Guts Throat Bones is a rare, fever dream like experience that will leave you wondering what in the hell you just read, and if any of it was even real to begin with. These stories are brilliant, kaleidoscopic, beautifully written works of art. It's easy to forget you're reading a novel that feels like the end of the world when it's penned this poetically.

Crack open the pages of this novel, and you'll find heart-shattering, highly erotic, hedonistic expressions of queer love, of grief, of rot and decay. Each story that passes inches you closer and closer to the abyss. It feels almost perverse to be reading this kind of book, as if you've scooped up a dusty, long forgotten diary, and are reading someone's most intimate and personal thoughts.

Mina leans in, dust-flecked and gorgeous, and with Louie's muscle and sinew exposed, blood dropping from jaw and chin, rivulets running along her neck like sunset streaked mountain streams.

As seductive as these stories are, they're also grotesque, bewildering and utterly disgusting. There isn't much happiness to be found here, you'll encounter nothing but shattered dreams and death, pausing only for the briefest reprieve in the arms of a lover. Sickening body horror gives way to whimsical nostalgia as each heartbreaking tale drags itself to a close.

With any collection of stories, there will always be the ones that stand above the rest. While every single tale in this disturbing book is amazing, some had me reeling, had me gasping 'what the actual fuck' out loud, these are the stories that for me, were amongst the best - Such A Pretty Face, Flowers, Only Corpses Stay and Nature Morte.

One small step at the right time and her body could be crushed against the white and green. Ribcage caved in, deep blow to the skull. Fingers severed by the scream of wheels on singing tracks. Blood and bits of brain.

[Rachel Louise Atkin]

3.5 stars. Very hit and miss collection for me. A couple of the stories I really enjoyed, such as the one where a girl accidentally summons a demon and falls in love with her. That one was absolutely excellent and gave me Jennifer’s Body vibes. There was probably one other good story which stood out but the rest of them for me just didn’t hit as good. I have always struggled with getting into short story collections, especially if not all of the stories absolutely pack a punch, and this was one of them where they kind of seemed to fall very flat. The writing was still great and I loved how there was great lesbian and LGBTQ rep inside every single story. There was quite a big dark fairytale vibe to the entire collection which I think will really suit the tastes of some readers, however I’ve never really been into fairytale like stories and retellings so this was one of the reasons I didn’t like it as much. I would still recommend this collection and I hope the author comes out with a full length novel next as I feel like I would devour it.

[✿]

i wish i could give this book 15 stars because it’s was out of this WORLD AMAZING

[Jennifer]

4.5⭐️

What an amazing collection of dark, queer, spooky, grotesque, heartbreaking stories. These were fantastic! I don’t think it will be a collection for everyone but I really enjoyed the twisted weirdness of it all.

Moïra Fowley did not hold back. These stories deal with themes of lust, grief, dark desires, love. Each one is written in a unique and different style from the one before it. This has a plethora of symbolism and metaphors which does make the interpretation difficult for some. The last few stories I struggled with specifically, but I still found Fowley’s prose to be beautiful. It is definitely horror, some of the truly darker ones really gripped my attention, I could not read the words fast enough. Some of these stories are really going to stay with me.

Lots of trigger warnings (self harm, death, body horror) Not quite 5 ⭐️ (it’s hard to find a short story collection that is) but pretty close.

[Abigail]

Moïra Fowley has been one of my favourite authors for years, and her latest book did not disappoint. changing tack a bit, this is a collection of adult horror stories about the end of the world - the end both in a traditional sense, and often in the sense of peeling someone's face off, or carrying your own house inside you.

the common thread running between these stories is queerness, whether beautiful or monstrous. each of the stories centres on a queer woman (or girl) making her way through the end of her world.

I loved each and every one of these stories, and I relished how they all connected to each other. I can't count the number of times I flicked backwards to find a parallel in imagery, or concept, or phrasing from a previous story that I then quoted in the margins.

personal favourites include:

- The Summoning: the writing style in this was so unique and memorable, and Katie is a character I won't forget in a long time.
- Rath: this follows two girls (and then women) through the years as they meet up every midsummer on the burial mound outside their village, while the woman buried there slowly starts to remember.
- Flowers: this felt the most similar in style to Fowley's other books, following a teenage girl in the throes of (literally) magical first love.
- Nature Morte: this one was so unusual. I'm sure it will stay with me for a while.

if you enjoy cannibalism as an expression of love, riddles, forests, and apocalypses where the only world ending is a girl's home town, then you should read Eyes Guts Throat Bones.

[froschpapi]

cw: Gore, Body horror, Sexual content, Self harm, Death, Child death, Lesbophobia, Infidelity, Bullying

I think most of these stories were neat and a lot of them were bangers even

[M]

Spectacular

[Anja]

A collection of beautifully written horror short stories mostly about motherhood and lesbianism.
The stories were captivating and eerie and clever (some maybe too clever e.g. confusing). I enjoyed it but as it often goes with short stories I was a bit bored by the end.

[Bingus Boingus]

A really sweet, sad, fun, gory collection, beautifully written and really contending for favourite book of the year

[Guilherme]

“Hearts bleed hard from shallow cracks too.”

4.5 stars

this book is full of layers. every short story feels carefully built and reveals more the longer you sit with it. the writing is poetic but never confusing, which i really appreciate.

my favorites were Nature Morte, Two truths and a lie and The summoning, which are all so freaking good.

i absolutely LOVE how much Moïra Fowley shows herself to be such a versatile writer throughout these stories. none of them feel repetitive or lazy, they all bring something different to the table. it’s honestly kind of genius how she manages to put everything together while bending genres in so many ways. Two truths and a lie is one of the stories that most showcases this. it was INSANELY genius to tell a horror story in that particular style. it added so much depth and created such a unique and tense feeling that i couldn’t stop thinking about it after i finished.

also, lesbians. there are a lot of them. doing lesbian things. if that’s your vibe, this book will personally shake your hand and thank you for coming.

a lot of these stories left me with questions and not the plot-hole type of questions. the kind of questions that make you want to sit down with the author and go "okay but what exactly happened here?" in the most excited, slightly feral way possible.

now, i wanted to give this book 5 stars. i really did. but there are 15 short stories here, and by the end, my brain was doing jumping jacks trying to keep up with all the new characters, new vibes, new plots. none of them are bad, in fact, they’re all good, but it is a lot. by the final few, i was experiencing short-story fatigue but honestly, that’s not the author’s fault at all. it’s just how i handle short story collections. my brain gets tired switching between so many characters, settings, and moods. even though each story is amazing, my attention naturally starts to waver after a while, and that’s on me, not the book.

[Miss Bookiverse]

Ging mit What Would You Give For A Treat Like Me richtig gut los und hat mich dann irgendwann mit seiner Zweitausender-Tumblr-Girl-Ästhetik gelangweilt. Als Teenager wär das genau mein Vibe gewesen, all diese jungen, schönen (dünnen), weißen Protagonistinnen und ihre sexy Gruselwelt aus Knochen, Blut, Lust und Liebe. Das Buch wird allerdings nicht für ein jugendliches Publikum angepriesen, dabei liest es sich bis auf einige Horrorelemente und die expliziten Szenen sehr wie Fowleys Jugendbücher. Selbst die Protagonistinnen sind oft Anfang Zwanzig oder erinnern sich ständig an ihre Jugend zurück. Wem diese Ästhetik und die Themen Queerness (f/f), Mutterschaft, Lust, Coming of Age und Body Horror zusagen, wird hier bestimmt glücklich; mir war’s insgesamt zu eintönig.

[Kat]

"Does the act of reading secret change the meaning of the text? The way you read this now informs the story. Pages splayed under blankets or spine bent in public so the cover's turned over. Who reads these words over your shoulder?"

This was a perfect lil read for the spooky season, a varied selection of sapphic horror stories! What more could you ask for.

Most of stories I thoroughly enjoyed although a few were just ok (as to be expected of any short story collection)