Origin Stories

by Corinna Vallianatos

“Corinna Vallianatos can make an entire soul come shining out of the smallest phrase."―Kevin Brockmeier

The stories in Origin Stories take as their subject the sources of love, marriage, motherhood, friendship, artistic ambition, restiveness, and shame. Their narrators perceive more than is explicable, want more than they have, and contend with the bounty and frugality of their relationships. In “This Isn’t the Actual Sea,” a woman considers that her friend’s failure and sudden success have given her the material she needs to write something of her own, if she’s willing to risk the friendship to do so. “The Artist’s Wife” describes, in a painting stowed in a bowling alley broom closet, the chasm between seeing and being seen. “Dogwood” is a piece of lyric reportage on beauty, family, and survival whose sections range from the narrator’s childhood to her son’s new adulthood. And “Origin Story” acts as an accounting of the many different states where a woman and her husband have lived, and what it is they’ve been searching for.

In this keen, meditative collection set in Southern California and Virginia, Corinna Vallianatos dramatizes the bonds of mother and child, the self-destruction of young womanhood, the thrill and bewilderment of friendship, and the power of place.

Origin Stories is filled with humor, longing, beauty, and belief.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 2025

About the author

Corinna Vallianatos is the author of a novel, The Beforeland, and two story collections, My Escapee and Origin Stories. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2023, McSweeney's, A Public Space, and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Susan Tunis · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. This author is new to me, and I really wanted to like this collection more. It's not terrible, but it's also not especially good.

I don't feel secure with my objection. The stories always feel like stories. They feel inauthentic. I actually like stories with, for instance, speculative or surreal elements. That's not what's going on here. I just don't feel like the reality of these characters and scenarios are grounded in anything. Also, the stories don't feel especially well-structured, with beginning, middle, and end.

In most collections, some stories are stronger than others. Here, things felt mostly the same, without a single standout. Sort of left thinking, "meh."

[Gabriela Grannis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe I'm biased because I know the author and I know what a meticulous writer she is, but I loved this collection. Here there are "professors who live in unkempt family splendor," there are "the gently shifting occupancies" of swimming pools where couples contemplate infidelity, and unbidden thoughts "that come rushing to one's mind despite their inappropriateness." No word is superfluous and nothing is left unexamined – shameful thoughts, mother-daughter relationships, envy among friends – though she gives you plenty to pick up and figure out on your own and leave you thinking about long after you've finished. I once heard her say that stories are like rooms you walk into (I'm paraphrasing), where you walk in, look around, and walk out; you don't have to know what ends up happening to the people inside, or how things will end.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and HighBridge Audio for the Audio ARC!

The stories in Origin Stories range from humorous to poignant, whimsical to earnest, and they are definitely worth a listen. I especially enjoyed the titular 'Origin Story' and 'This Isn't the Actual Sea'. A nice collection of interesting stories.

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the first half better -- the second half has a bunch of very short stories that don't seem to be about anything.

New Girls - college students in a help talk-therapy group for bulimia. 4/5

Traveling Light - woman regrets past relationships and a boyfriend she'd like to get back together with. 3/5

Something in Common - mother visits adult daughter in LA, both are having dating issues. 3/5

Shifting Occupancies - both halves of a couple are having an affair, 4/5

Falconer - about two boys who are skateboard friends as kids and grow apart as adults. 4/5

A Neighboring State - teenage daughter runs away from home. Unsetting and weirdly upsetting. 4/5

Love Not - teenager falls into obsessive "love" with his mom's friend. 5/5

The Artist's Wife - unhappy couple goes to an artist friend's event. 3/5

Blades in Silver Water - babysitter and charge get kidnapped? Or something, this was odd. 2/5

Old Poets - woman trying and failing to publish a novel lies about her credentials. 3/5

Origin Story - list of places a woman has lived? like little vignettes, nothing much to them. 2/5

Dogwood - a handful of stories that all involve car accidents, 2/5

A Lot of Good It Does Being in the Underworld - woman after the unexpected death of a friend, 2/5

False Choice - stream of consciousness that I can't even summarize. 2/5

This Isn't the Actual Sea - about two friends, one of which has made a movie. 3/5

[Henry 磊磊 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok this is an excellent collection, though I understand her style is not for everyone. I personally love it as a perfect blend of poetic prose. She provides just enough detail to create the contours of the story and characters and leaves you to fill in the rest. This might drive some people crazy but I find it titillating.

Here are some snapshots to provide a sense:

Shifting Occupancies: “Are we ending things, is that it?” He felt a rush of relief, then annoyance that she’d beaten him to it. “I need to.” She shrugged. “There’s really nothing to end.” “This is nothing? I guess it’s true you risked nothing. I didn’t.”

Love not: “But I will say I recognize that you’re going through something. I used to fall in love so easily. I fell in love with someone because of the way he stood up from a chair. It was like his knees unhooked themselves from his body and he floated upward and was ours for the taking, the people in the room, and I had better claim him before anyone else did. I’d’ve never noticed him had he stay seated.”

Origin Story: One spaghetti-stained issue of Harper’s between them, football on TV…The sound of oncoming traffic was her life so far, and the sound of it receding was her life now.

This isn’t the actual Sea: The questions asked by those students who remained were deeply skeptical of the movie’s depiction of the lives of middle-aged women as lives of frustration and anger and shame. You could tell they didn’t think their futures would bear any resemblance to that. Their futures were like stacks of soft folded sweaters in a pretty store with a salesgirl whose hair was cut in a style they would soon see everywhere. Some girls were nearly soothsayers that way.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to figure out what these stories shared in common, or what origins the title alludes to, but I couldn't. The themes that I noticed and found interesting had to do loosely with beauty standards, or with what it is to be a woman. I enjoyed the stories individually, but they blended together, despite their being quite separate. Some were about marriage, some affairs, some parent-child, some friendships; all very nuanced and in-the-head. My favorite was the one I found the funniest, Love Not, about a teenage boy's misguided failure of a crush on a friend of his mom's.

A great line I laughed at was "He thought he might throw up she was so appealing." Especially because of what it was in reference to: "She was wearing sticky orange lipstick and her teeth, misaligned, made a clicking sound like sifting ashes." Then there were others that didn't work for me, like "...she had eaten in those establishments on other streets like these with power lines like wet hair caught in a comb's teeth and black gas station gallon numbers against a white board like a theater marquee advertising the cost of living."

[Nadia Meriouli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Highbridge Audio for the ARC of this audiobook for my honest review

This was a very poetic story. Which I didn’t realize when I started so that’s my fault because I just can’t get into poetic writing. It’s overcomplicated and makes you take your own meanings from simple things. I also felt like it felt all over the place but seeing as it was a writing style I didn’t like I couldn’t say if that was the point or not. If you like poetry go ahead but it was a hard read for me.

[Kirby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a gem. Some real standouts here, esp. Dogwood, This Isn't the Actual Sea, and the title story. But all the stories have surprising bursts of lyricism and strange observations. I hear echoes of Lucia Berlin but the voice seems singular and original. I'd recommend this book to anyone who reads short stories.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the high reviews, I just wasn’t enjoying this book. Felt the stories were dark. A few seemed better, but overall wasn’t into it, quit ½ way through. So the 3 stars is how it affected me - the quality of the writing was not the issue

[Lily Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of stories! Each one is as polished as the last and her voice comes through so strongly! There’s both consistency and range, and I would highly recommend “Shifting Occupancies” and “Love Not”.

[Connie]

#GoodreadsGiveaway

[Kayla Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some short stored was really good but others was not ad good

[Joanna Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, sharp, austere.

[Barbette · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars if you, too, are a writer-mother.

My review can be found at the Southern Review of Books:

https://southernreviewofbooks.com/202...

[Chandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads more like poetry. I couldn't understand it but the writing was lyrical and beautiful.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of these, preferred the first half. Objectively not badly written just not my style.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two kinds of stories here, some more straightforward (and often witty), and others lush with observation and exploration. Beautiful, poised.