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Elephants in Bloom
Debut collection from a French author who has been making a name for herself with regular contributions to Interzone and elsewhere (Clarkesworld, ParSec, etc). Providing a fresh perspective on the world, humanity, and its potential (both good and bad), Cécile’s fiction reflects her love of the natural world and concern for its future. Elephants in Bloom contains her finest previously published stories, as selected by the author, alongside eight brand new tales that appear here for the first time.
Contents
Introduction
All We Ever Look For
The Fishery
A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk
A Stray Cat in the Mountain of The Dead
Que la Grenade Est Touchante
When You Meet the Wild Hunt
The Hangman’s Legacy
Ice Cream from Pluto
Soaring, the World on Their Shoulders
Schrödinger’s Children
A Diary from the End of the World
The Third Time I Saw a Fox
Kings of Snow
The Owl Woman
The Goddess’s Spear
Nine Lives, One to Spare
Wind, River, Angel Song
Elephants in Bloom
About the Author
Each story is followed by a note from the author, providing further insight and context.
“This was a beautifully written story with just a perfect ending.” – SFRevue of “The Third Time I Saw a Fox”
“This was a quiet character-centric story with a strange appeal that belied any attempt to analyze it.” – Tangent of “The Third Time I Saw a Fox”
“The piece is beautifully rendered, careful and kind, and yearning for a world more full of compassion than the one the characters encounter. A great read!” – Goodreads reviewer of “Que la Grenade est Touchante”
“A bittersweet tale, beautifully told.” – SFRevue of “Wind, River, Angel Song”
Contents
Introduction
All We Ever Look For
The Fishery
A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk
A Stray Cat in the Mountain of The Dead
Que la Grenade Est Touchante
When You Meet the Wild Hunt
The Hangman’s Legacy
Ice Cream from Pluto
Soaring, the World on Their Shoulders
Schrödinger’s Children
A Diary from the End of the World
The Third Time I Saw a Fox
Kings of Snow
The Owl Woman
The Goddess’s Spear
Nine Lives, One to Spare
Wind, River, Angel Song
Elephants in Bloom
About the Author
Each story is followed by a note from the author, providing further insight and context.
“This was a beautifully written story with just a perfect ending.” – SFRevue of “The Third Time I Saw a Fox”
“This was a quiet character-centric story with a strange appeal that belied any attempt to analyze it.” – Tangent of “The Third Time I Saw a Fox”
“The piece is beautifully rendered, careful and kind, and yearning for a world more full of compassion than the one the characters encounter. A great read!” – Goodreads reviewer of “Que la Grenade est Touchante”
“A bittersweet tale, beautifully told.” – SFRevue of “Wind, River, Angel Song”
- GenresFantasy
273 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 11, 2025
‘Elephants In Bloom’ by Cécile Cristofari is the fifth book in the Polestars series of individual author short story collections from NewCon Press. The collection features eighteen original stories, with ten previously published in magazines or anthologies.
In ‘All We Ever Look For,’ a lady opens the window of her Quebec apartment and sees ‘three parrots perched on a tree hanging over a deserted beach of pure white sand.’ When she closes the window, the scene reverts to the maple tree outside as normal. If she opens it again, she knows there will be something completely different: mountains, deserts, and jungles. The window is somehow a portal to other places. This fantastic premise sets up a quiet, thoughtful tale, a slice of life, really, with an Eleanor Rigby theme. Is anybody happy out there?
Huge environmental issues are tackled in ‘The Fishery.’ The fishery opens at dawn, cranes ready to drop the day’s load onto the conveyor belts, ‘nets overflowing with dead things from across the cosmos.’ The catch in the nets is ‘the usual fare: debris, fragments of asteroids that had been roaming the void for aeons, a few anaemic rays of light here and there.’ The story is told from the point of view of three characters. Orna is an environmental inspector. Jana is a journalist working undercover. Ary is an overseer. It’s a metaphor for overfishing, but the cast are not villains, just trapped by circumstance. The world needs food.
Alice and Laurent are dropped off on a small island by their son to avoid a pandemic. They can see the lights of the mainland and have stocks of pasta and beans. They can fish, but the lights on the mainland get fewer and fewer. Are old people worth saving? I liked ‘A Kingdom Of Seagrass And Silk’ but have a fondness for tales of married couples who actually get on well. The circumstances reminded me of ‘Birdwatching At The End Of The World’ by G. W. Dexter, which is also available from Newcon Press.
One of my favourites here is ‘The Hangman’s Legacy.’ In a settlement near Narbonne, the hangman sells corpses to a widow, something that would get them both in serious trouble if discovered. She pays in coin. Madeleine sells remedies, poultices, lucky charms, and embroideries to locals who don’t know what goes into them. Then the prettiest girl in the village asks her for a love charm to make a wicked man want her. This dark fantasy is one of the strongest stories in the book.
In ‘Soaring, The World On Their Shoulders,’ the decent patriots of France have had enough and elected a strong leader who will make the country great again. Top scientist Madame Armande Santucci hopes to keep a low profile and avoid working for their war machine, but that won’t happen. She’s disappointed by how many friends cooperate to save their own skins. What would you do? It’s easy being a keyboard warrior, but it’s tougher in a damp basement with your nipples wired to the mains and a little sadist in a grey uniform holding the switch. That’s not a scene in the story, just my own opinion. The title refers to Santucci’s invention, which the regime hopes to use for war. Is she able to reverse their plans?
Archie lets the cat out of the quantum bag in ‘Schrodinger’s Children.’ Two cats, actually, one alive and one dead. The original belonged to the man next door. Our neighbour, Mr. Newton, is the unpredictable sort. This is a bit of fun with the English language by a native French speaker and first appeared in ‘Andromeda Spaceways Magazine,’ which I must read someday.
In ‘A Diary From The End Of The World,’ an alien narrator has disguised herself as human and spent three years studying planet DA3(1), the third daughter of star Alkahran, where the dominant species has ‘a voracious and utterly unviable relationship with their habitat.’ Summoned home, she must find a way to a remote isle off the coast of Tierra del Fuego where she left her transport. A poetic travelogue of the Beagle Channel with a story thrown in.
‘The Owl Woman’ is a prehistoric tale about the lives of hill people in Provence, subject to raids by bigger, stronger men from the valleys who take their women away. It’s an interesting speculation on a time for which there are no written records.
The book closes with the title story, ‘Elephants In Bloom.’ God, it seems, has fallen out of the sky and landed on a mountain conveniently near a cathedral. Scientists are burrowing into his corpse to find out what they can. ‘This was God, the same as he’d always been: a ponderous, useless carcass, taking up so much space you couldn’t help running into him even when you tried your best to live away from his influence.’ Victor, the narrator, is a fourteen-year-old boy who is quite smitten with his teacher Ilana, a member of the religious group called the Children of Charity. The setting is after a cataclysm that had nothing to do with God, just global warming, plagues, and the energy crisis. Scientists must pedal bikes to run their computers. It’s an odd tale, but it sort of works.
An interesting and well-written set of stories that will make you think. Mostly, it will make you think about environmental disaster, pandemics, global warming, man’s effect on nature, and whales. Each story has an author’s note appended to tell you what inspired it and add commentary. Cécile Cristofari teaches English literature and has written a PhD dissertation on science fiction and fantasy. I like that she only writes short stories and has a proper job as well. That indicates they were the result of inspiration, not hacked out to make a buck. Four of the stories were previously published in Interzone,’ and this collection has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, so you can tell it’s intelligent, literary, and modern. Worth the effort of reading, but my brain hurts now, so I must go and watch ‘Buck Rogers.’
In ‘All We Ever Look For,’ a lady opens the window of her Quebec apartment and sees ‘three parrots perched on a tree hanging over a deserted beach of pure white sand.’ When she closes the window, the scene reverts to the maple tree outside as normal. If she opens it again, she knows there will be something completely different: mountains, deserts, and jungles. The window is somehow a portal to other places. This fantastic premise sets up a quiet, thoughtful tale, a slice of life, really, with an Eleanor Rigby theme. Is anybody happy out there?
Huge environmental issues are tackled in ‘The Fishery.’ The fishery opens at dawn, cranes ready to drop the day’s load onto the conveyor belts, ‘nets overflowing with dead things from across the cosmos.’ The catch in the nets is ‘the usual fare: debris, fragments of asteroids that had been roaming the void for aeons, a few anaemic rays of light here and there.’ The story is told from the point of view of three characters. Orna is an environmental inspector. Jana is a journalist working undercover. Ary is an overseer. It’s a metaphor for overfishing, but the cast are not villains, just trapped by circumstance. The world needs food.
Alice and Laurent are dropped off on a small island by their son to avoid a pandemic. They can see the lights of the mainland and have stocks of pasta and beans. They can fish, but the lights on the mainland get fewer and fewer. Are old people worth saving? I liked ‘A Kingdom Of Seagrass And Silk’ but have a fondness for tales of married couples who actually get on well. The circumstances reminded me of ‘Birdwatching At The End Of The World’ by G. W. Dexter, which is also available from Newcon Press.
One of my favourites here is ‘The Hangman’s Legacy.’ In a settlement near Narbonne, the hangman sells corpses to a widow, something that would get them both in serious trouble if discovered. She pays in coin. Madeleine sells remedies, poultices, lucky charms, and embroideries to locals who don’t know what goes into them. Then the prettiest girl in the village asks her for a love charm to make a wicked man want her. This dark fantasy is one of the strongest stories in the book.
In ‘Soaring, The World On Their Shoulders,’ the decent patriots of France have had enough and elected a strong leader who will make the country great again. Top scientist Madame Armande Santucci hopes to keep a low profile and avoid working for their war machine, but that won’t happen. She’s disappointed by how many friends cooperate to save their own skins. What would you do? It’s easy being a keyboard warrior, but it’s tougher in a damp basement with your nipples wired to the mains and a little sadist in a grey uniform holding the switch. That’s not a scene in the story, just my own opinion. The title refers to Santucci’s invention, which the regime hopes to use for war. Is she able to reverse their plans?
Archie lets the cat out of the quantum bag in ‘Schrodinger’s Children.’ Two cats, actually, one alive and one dead. The original belonged to the man next door. Our neighbour, Mr. Newton, is the unpredictable sort. This is a bit of fun with the English language by a native French speaker and first appeared in ‘Andromeda Spaceways Magazine,’ which I must read someday.
In ‘A Diary From The End Of The World,’ an alien narrator has disguised herself as human and spent three years studying planet DA3(1), the third daughter of star Alkahran, where the dominant species has ‘a voracious and utterly unviable relationship with their habitat.’ Summoned home, she must find a way to a remote isle off the coast of Tierra del Fuego where she left her transport. A poetic travelogue of the Beagle Channel with a story thrown in.
‘The Owl Woman’ is a prehistoric tale about the lives of hill people in Provence, subject to raids by bigger, stronger men from the valleys who take their women away. It’s an interesting speculation on a time for which there are no written records.
The book closes with the title story, ‘Elephants In Bloom.’ God, it seems, has fallen out of the sky and landed on a mountain conveniently near a cathedral. Scientists are burrowing into his corpse to find out what they can. ‘This was God, the same as he’d always been: a ponderous, useless carcass, taking up so much space you couldn’t help running into him even when you tried your best to live away from his influence.’ Victor, the narrator, is a fourteen-year-old boy who is quite smitten with his teacher Ilana, a member of the religious group called the Children of Charity. The setting is after a cataclysm that had nothing to do with God, just global warming, plagues, and the energy crisis. Scientists must pedal bikes to run their computers. It’s an odd tale, but it sort of works.
An interesting and well-written set of stories that will make you think. Mostly, it will make you think about environmental disaster, pandemics, global warming, man’s effect on nature, and whales. Each story has an author’s note appended to tell you what inspired it and add commentary. Cécile Cristofari teaches English literature and has written a PhD dissertation on science fiction and fantasy. I like that she only writes short stories and has a proper job as well. That indicates they were the result of inspiration, not hacked out to make a buck. Four of the stories were previously published in Interzone,’ and this collection has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, so you can tell it’s intelligent, literary, and modern. Worth the effort of reading, but my brain hurts now, so I must go and watch ‘Buck Rogers.’
August 21, 2025
“Elephants in Bloom” is a thought-provoking collection of short stories that blends fantasy and near-future science fiction with a touch of weirdness.
It is never weirdness for the sake of weirdness, however. Each strange twist is plumbed for thematic depth that leaves questions percolating in the mind after the story is finished. Whether it’s people turning into plants as a bizarre response to the trauma of war, like in “Que la Grenade Est Touchante,” or a similar affliction depicted in “Wind, River, Angel Song” spread by the winds of climate change, Cristofari unfailingly centers a character in crisis so achingly relatable that the strangeness presented is easy to map onto the problems we all face in the present day.
My favorites were “The Hangman’s Legacy,” about a witch and her reliance on the local executioner, “A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk” about retirees who escape from a pandemic to an abandoned island where they must learn to live off the land (and sea!), and the titular “Elephants in Bloom” which posits the question of what would happen if God’s literal body fell to the earth like a titan.
Many of the stories center humanity’s relationship to nature, and here Cristofari shines. She describes the world around us with the pure delight of a starry-eyed child. Trees, birds, seascapes, they all sparkle with an almost sacred quality in her hands, so much so that I found my own perspective on the natural world imbued with a touch more wonder.
In her story, “The Fishery,” where ephemeral things, like emotions and memories, are harvested for commercial consumption, Cristofari writes “Hope was a rare delicacy, incredibly tricky to grow and difficult to maintain.”
This collection is such a delicacy.
It is never weirdness for the sake of weirdness, however. Each strange twist is plumbed for thematic depth that leaves questions percolating in the mind after the story is finished. Whether it’s people turning into plants as a bizarre response to the trauma of war, like in “Que la Grenade Est Touchante,” or a similar affliction depicted in “Wind, River, Angel Song” spread by the winds of climate change, Cristofari unfailingly centers a character in crisis so achingly relatable that the strangeness presented is easy to map onto the problems we all face in the present day.
My favorites were “The Hangman’s Legacy,” about a witch and her reliance on the local executioner, “A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk” about retirees who escape from a pandemic to an abandoned island where they must learn to live off the land (and sea!), and the titular “Elephants in Bloom” which posits the question of what would happen if God’s literal body fell to the earth like a titan.
Many of the stories center humanity’s relationship to nature, and here Cristofari shines. She describes the world around us with the pure delight of a starry-eyed child. Trees, birds, seascapes, they all sparkle with an almost sacred quality in her hands, so much so that I found my own perspective on the natural world imbued with a touch more wonder.
In her story, “The Fishery,” where ephemeral things, like emotions and memories, are harvested for commercial consumption, Cristofari writes “Hope was a rare delicacy, incredibly tricky to grow and difficult to maintain.”
This collection is such a delicacy.
October 4, 2026
Beautiful, serene, inventive short stories exploring themes of beginning and ends, all steeped in humans’ relation to the world around them and the ever present nature.
I particularly loved these as they are firmly anchored in the landscapes, culture and mythology of the South East of France which made them really resonate with me. The delicate reflection on the ongoing ecological and societal crisis is also very topical.
I particularly loved these as they are firmly anchored in the landscapes, culture and mythology of the South East of France which made them really resonate with me. The delicate reflection on the ongoing ecological and societal crisis is also very topical.
January 7, 2026
Single author collections are tricky, because few writers have a varied enough 'voice' to avoid the saminess problem, and this is no exception. But each individual story is beautifully crafted.
My preferences were for the cross genre, sf/f stories. Here I think Cristofari's imagination really came to the fore.
My preferences were for the cross genre, sf/f stories. Here I think Cristofari's imagination really came to the fore.
January 17, 2024
This is the author’s first collection of short stories. Ten of them appeared in a variety of publications over the past five years, eight are original to this book. Each is provided with an authorial afterword. Some of these mention Cristofari’s French background and the latitude she gains as a writer from having two languages to draw on. She casts her net wide, with settings ranging from prehistory through to the present day and beyond. A common thread running through them is ecological collapse and possible recovery from it, in perhaps a sign of recent events some feature characters living in the aftermath of a pandemic.
A few are set in France, two even in Québec. Most succeed well but The Fishery, where “fishing boats” scour the universe for usable materials while avoiding inhabited worlds, has a central metaphor which is unfortunately stretched beyond breaking point. All have a firm focus on the humans at their heart and the dilemmas which they face.
The scenarios vary widely: a woman lives in a house with a window which gives onto other worlds so providing a means of escape, a couple try to evade an ongoing apocalypse on an otherwise deserted island, an intrusive cat in a care home seems to be a feline angel of death, a girl in post-Great War France talks to her never born brother to honour her non-French origins, a dangerous encounter on a mountain road ends in various ways, a witch has an uneasy pact with a hangman, another woman, with the help of the Moon, flies to Pluto in a plastic bottle to find her son who set out to search for his dead grandmother, a research scientist in a kind of steampunk fascist dictatorship secretly works against the regime, two children put a cat into a quantum bag in a glorious excuse for the author to deploy numerous cat puns (the least of which is is it alive or dead, and in which world?) An alien reports back to her planet from World’s End in Tierra Del Fuego, a museum caretaker converses with the (long dead) exhibits after hours, three travellers bearing gifts for a newborn trudge through a post-apocalyptic Québec winter, a stone-age woman finds a home outside her birth group despite the disfigurement inflicted on her to prevent it, a woman meant for sacrifice is surprised to find herself in the goddess’s world, a witch and a space-faring knight come to an accommodation after the battle they fought destroyed the world. The end can come in three ways, by wind, by flood, and by someone singing “My Bloody Valentine”, a group of archaeologists investigating the interior of the god who fell to Earth on the local mountain find an unusual treasure.
With the single exception mentioned above Cristofari handles all of them very well.
A few are set in France, two even in Québec. Most succeed well but The Fishery, where “fishing boats” scour the universe for usable materials while avoiding inhabited worlds, has a central metaphor which is unfortunately stretched beyond breaking point. All have a firm focus on the humans at their heart and the dilemmas which they face.
The scenarios vary widely: a woman lives in a house with a window which gives onto other worlds so providing a means of escape, a couple try to evade an ongoing apocalypse on an otherwise deserted island, an intrusive cat in a care home seems to be a feline angel of death, a girl in post-Great War France talks to her never born brother to honour her non-French origins, a dangerous encounter on a mountain road ends in various ways, a witch has an uneasy pact with a hangman, another woman, with the help of the Moon, flies to Pluto in a plastic bottle to find her son who set out to search for his dead grandmother, a research scientist in a kind of steampunk fascist dictatorship secretly works against the regime, two children put a cat into a quantum bag in a glorious excuse for the author to deploy numerous cat puns (the least of which is is it alive or dead, and in which world?) An alien reports back to her planet from World’s End in Tierra Del Fuego, a museum caretaker converses with the (long dead) exhibits after hours, three travellers bearing gifts for a newborn trudge through a post-apocalyptic Québec winter, a stone-age woman finds a home outside her birth group despite the disfigurement inflicted on her to prevent it, a woman meant for sacrifice is surprised to find herself in the goddess’s world, a witch and a space-faring knight come to an accommodation after the battle they fought destroyed the world. The end can come in three ways, by wind, by flood, and by someone singing “My Bloody Valentine”, a group of archaeologists investigating the interior of the god who fell to Earth on the local mountain find an unusual treasure.
With the single exception mentioned above Cristofari handles all of them very well.
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