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Gyre
Abigail Patel does not expect to be born a second time. Yet from infancy she is aware she has lived before. She has no specific memories of her prior lifetime; what she does possess is inexplicable melancholy and foreboding.
Abigail and her mother Faye must navigate a mother-daughter relationship that starts to deteriorate. As fragmentary memories from Abigail’s previous life begin to unlock, a conviction burgeons that she has been guilty of some terrible act.
When at last Abigail learns what links the crumbling relationship with Faye and the troubling memories of her past life, the revelation will upend her entire identity.
Abigail and her mother Faye must navigate a mother-daughter relationship that starts to deteriorate. As fragmentary memories from Abigail’s previous life begin to unlock, a conviction burgeons that she has been guilty of some terrible act.
When at last Abigail learns what links the crumbling relationship with Faye and the troubling memories of her past life, the revelation will upend her entire identity.
190 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 23, 2025
17 people want to read
About the author
Dale Stromberg
9 books23 followersDale Stromberg is the author of the high fantasy novel Mæj (tRaum Books, 2024), the curio fiction novel Gyre (2025), and the oddball collection Melancholic Parables (2022). He grew up not far from Sacramento before moving to Tokyo, where he had a brief music career. Now he lives near Kuala Lumpur and makes ends meet as an editor and translator.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 9, 2025
Chuck Palahniuk said something like, "Write about the day everything changed." In a modern story, the ability of the main character to finally, after much struggle, rise to the occasion after being thrust into a new situation, is a universal theme. We read it and are maybe comforted that when the time comes, we too will find a way to deal with a death in the family or an alien attack.
Conversely, there's the flawed character who is constantly fucking up and making the same mistakes. They are frustrated and we are frustrated with them. Why can't they change? Why do they keep performing madness, aka, the same actions and expecting something different? Slowly, the book reveals their trauma, their backstory. It may be an excuse or simply an explanation: this is what holds them back.
The person who is confronted with a cataclysmic, troubling change and rises to the occasion, versus the person who can't change, being held back by their own past.
GYRE asks... what if? There was a secret third thing?
++
There is an incredible amount going on for such a short book, still, everything fits and is accounted for--a facet of Stromberg's writing that I have begun to consider his trademark is the intricate care with which all the pieces are placed together. A character in the story compares music to math; yes, that parallel runs in GYRE too. Music plays an important role in the characters' lives--at one point, two of them discuss contrapuntal harmony (two distinctly different melodies that combine in a song to make a new and very satisfying texture of harmony)--It takes a special ear to add this when writing a song----and Stromberg adds that texture to his story, the way he weaves his two main characters, the daughter Abby and the mother Faye, together.
This story is precise and calculated, and also woven through and through with pure artistry and emotion. I've read most of this author's works by now, and this is one of my favorites for the way it dares to unmask some of our basest and ugliest feelings and swerve sharply from the modern story's revel in agency and the ability to conquer all. GYRE is an adult with big ideas, sweeping creativity, and focused language, cowering in a humiliatingly fragile body, battered by forces it can deconstruct with a mature intellect, but cannot physically overcome. A strange inversion of how in many of us full-grown adults equipped with cunning lurks the child still guilelessly seeking acceptance and approval from the elders.
GYRE offers a complicated take on trauma, wielded often in fiction (and real life) as a trump card that must be accepted when offered, to exonerate a character (or a person's character). At least to me, the book seems to ask: can we admit that life is (for most of us) inherently traumatic AND that some of us, are still, raging jerkbags beyond excuse?
Conversely, there's the flawed character who is constantly fucking up and making the same mistakes. They are frustrated and we are frustrated with them. Why can't they change? Why do they keep performing madness, aka, the same actions and expecting something different? Slowly, the book reveals their trauma, their backstory. It may be an excuse or simply an explanation: this is what holds them back.
The person who is confronted with a cataclysmic, troubling change and rises to the occasion, versus the person who can't change, being held back by their own past.
GYRE asks... what if? There was a secret third thing?
++
There is an incredible amount going on for such a short book, still, everything fits and is accounted for--a facet of Stromberg's writing that I have begun to consider his trademark is the intricate care with which all the pieces are placed together. A character in the story compares music to math; yes, that parallel runs in GYRE too. Music plays an important role in the characters' lives--at one point, two of them discuss contrapuntal harmony (two distinctly different melodies that combine in a song to make a new and very satisfying texture of harmony)--It takes a special ear to add this when writing a song----and Stromberg adds that texture to his story, the way he weaves his two main characters, the daughter Abby and the mother Faye, together.
This story is precise and calculated, and also woven through and through with pure artistry and emotion. I've read most of this author's works by now, and this is one of my favorites for the way it dares to unmask some of our basest and ugliest feelings and swerve sharply from the modern story's revel in agency and the ability to conquer all. GYRE is an adult with big ideas, sweeping creativity, and focused language, cowering in a humiliatingly fragile body, battered by forces it can deconstruct with a mature intellect, but cannot physically overcome. A strange inversion of how in many of us full-grown adults equipped with cunning lurks the child still guilelessly seeking acceptance and approval from the elders.
GYRE offers a complicated take on trauma, wielded often in fiction (and real life) as a trump card that must be accepted when offered, to exonerate a character (or a person's character). At least to me, the book seems to ask: can we admit that life is (for most of us) inherently traumatic AND that some of us, are still, raging jerkbags beyond excuse?
December 27, 2024
An utterly devastating novella about generational trauma, mothers and daughters, and inescapable patterns. Abigail is born with adult knowledge of the world, but only fragments of memory of a life she must have lived before. She grows up unsettlingly precocious, to the delight of her father and the despair of her mother. When a family tragedy strikes, Abigail and Faye are drawn into a dark folie a deux, looped into a cycle that Abigail struggles to escape. This is a poetic and brutal paradox of a character study that I couldn't put down.
March 2, 2025
I read this very tight, very dark Mobius strip novella in one sitting, which I think speaks to excellent pacing. Although the twists are not especially difficult to predict after a certain point, I think that a reader is best served going into the story knowing as little about it as possible: I had heard enough about it that I had an idea of the overall direction everything was going from the start, and I think it would have hit even harder if I hadn’t. This book is bound to make some people uncomfortable because it depicts a very abusive person with a lot of understanding and compassion (even as it is also unambiguously morally condemning that character). But personally, I think that type of portrayal is valuable— no one should ever get too comfortable with the idea that because someone is sympathetic, complicated, and frequently kind, it means they cannot also be abusive or could never become abusive. No one should ever get too comfortable with the idea that *they* couldn’t abuse anyone.
There are an *astonishing* amount of ideas crammed into this very short book, most of which are explored with nuance and subtlety in its succinct, straightforward prose style (the one flashy literary maneuver here is a late shift from first person to third person omniscient narration, which Stromberg accomplishes in a slick way). I wasn’t expecting, and enjoyed, the focus on how online fan cultures treat (or rather ignore/in some cases exacerbate) the emotional distress and mental illness of performers. There’s a subplot in here that made me wonder whether Stromberg had read the following r/HobbyDrama series of posts on the artist Emilie Autumn (the final post in the series here links back to the rest, the tl;dr is this is someone who rose to brief cult fame making [sometimes great!] music based on her extremely intense, extremely ongoing struggles with self-destructive behavior, various traumas, and bipolar disorder, then had a bunch of fans turn on her for Acting Like Someone With Poorly Managed Bipolar Disorder and/or C-PTSD): https://shorturl.at/OHb1T
There are an *astonishing* amount of ideas crammed into this very short book, most of which are explored with nuance and subtlety in its succinct, straightforward prose style (the one flashy literary maneuver here is a late shift from first person to third person omniscient narration, which Stromberg accomplishes in a slick way). I wasn’t expecting, and enjoyed, the focus on how online fan cultures treat (or rather ignore/in some cases exacerbate) the emotional distress and mental illness of performers. There’s a subplot in here that made me wonder whether Stromberg had read the following r/HobbyDrama series of posts on the artist Emilie Autumn (the final post in the series here links back to the rest, the tl;dr is this is someone who rose to brief cult fame making [sometimes great!] music based on her extremely intense, extremely ongoing struggles with self-destructive behavior, various traumas, and bipolar disorder, then had a bunch of fans turn on her for Acting Like Someone With Poorly Managed Bipolar Disorder and/or C-PTSD): https://shorturl.at/OHb1T
August 20, 2025
This is an amazing story that I've become absolutely obsessed with. I have so many questions, although in truth, I don't need answers to any of them, the power of this novel is in how thought provoking it is.
I wish I could get everyone to read this book, it's truly an incredibly study of how our identities are formed and if there's any possibility of breaking free from childhood scars.
I wish I could get everyone to read this book, it's truly an incredibly study of how our identities are formed and if there's any possibility of breaking free from childhood scars.
January 28, 2025
The first thing I want to say about this book is that, as the first I've had the pleasure of reviewing n 2025 it is going to be a tough one to beat.
The concept reminds me of a Robert Heinlein short story I read over fifty years ago which was probably written many years before that. In it he plays with the ideas of time travel and gender reassignment in order to create a character who is his own mother and father.
Gyre begins with the birth of a baby girl whose body is inhabited by the mind of an adult woman. As the first person narrator of the story she is able to observe and describe to us the relationship between her mother and father through the eyes of an adult. At the same time she experiences the frustration of being mentally able to do many things that the immaturity of her physical body makes impossible. Nevertheless, life for the young family is going well, especially when her mother sells a song which becomes a huge hit.
Things begin to deteriorate when the father is killed in a tragic accident and the mother descends into grief driven alcoholism. This period is characterised by a series of confrontations between mother and daughter which culminate in a violent episode that changes everything. From that climactic point onward, we leave the first person narrative for a more detached third person view of her life with adoptive parents, her troubled adolescence, her musical career in which her talents are exploited by others, to her meeting with the love of her life, marriage and pregnancy.
Throughout we are treated to an exploration of domestic relationships, bullying, physical and mental abuse and alcoholism which is all too realistic.
In parallel with this are many superb descriptions of music which demonstrate the author's deep understanding of the subject and of the nature of the industry that surrounds it. Indeed, it seemed to me that the way the book is constructed bears comparison with a masterpiece of musical composition. The change of POV in the later scenes is analogous to a key change in a piece of music. The effect on the emotions of the reader is exactly similar to those experienced whilst listening to a great piece of music. A roller coaster ride of ever increasing emotional highs until reaching a towering climax before being gently returned to earth. A magisterial achievement that surely deserves to become a best seller and prize winner.
I received a free copy of this book from the author, via Rosie Amber's book review website.
The concept reminds me of a Robert Heinlein short story I read over fifty years ago which was probably written many years before that. In it he plays with the ideas of time travel and gender reassignment in order to create a character who is his own mother and father.
Gyre begins with the birth of a baby girl whose body is inhabited by the mind of an adult woman. As the first person narrator of the story she is able to observe and describe to us the relationship between her mother and father through the eyes of an adult. At the same time she experiences the frustration of being mentally able to do many things that the immaturity of her physical body makes impossible. Nevertheless, life for the young family is going well, especially when her mother sells a song which becomes a huge hit.
Things begin to deteriorate when the father is killed in a tragic accident and the mother descends into grief driven alcoholism. This period is characterised by a series of confrontations between mother and daughter which culminate in a violent episode that changes everything. From that climactic point onward, we leave the first person narrative for a more detached third person view of her life with adoptive parents, her troubled adolescence, her musical career in which her talents are exploited by others, to her meeting with the love of her life, marriage and pregnancy.
Throughout we are treated to an exploration of domestic relationships, bullying, physical and mental abuse and alcoholism which is all too realistic.
In parallel with this are many superb descriptions of music which demonstrate the author's deep understanding of the subject and of the nature of the industry that surrounds it. Indeed, it seemed to me that the way the book is constructed bears comparison with a masterpiece of musical composition. The change of POV in the later scenes is analogous to a key change in a piece of music. The effect on the emotions of the reader is exactly similar to those experienced whilst listening to a great piece of music. A roller coaster ride of ever increasing emotional highs until reaching a towering climax before being gently returned to earth. A magisterial achievement that surely deserves to become a best seller and prize winner.
I received a free copy of this book from the author, via Rosie Amber's book review website.
March 13, 2025
Reincarnated and painfully aware of it, Abigail Patel relives her infancy trying to piece together the fragmented memories of her past life, knowing only that it hides a horrifying secret.
Whether you call Gyre a novel or a novella will likely depend on how avid a reader you are, but this short, minimalistic tale packs a powerful emotional punch, as the author crafts a deep, captivating tale of (past-)self-discovery and family bonds: one that starts off innocently charming, but gradually becomes darker as Abigail's memories begin to resurface.
Though much of the first-person narrative is told through the eyes of an infant growing into a young child, this is not a child's story. From the moment of her rebirth, Abigail is mentally very much an adult, with all the emotional baggage and lack of innocence that comes with maturity. Throughout her new infancy and early childhood, Abigail must constantly keep in check her burning desire to interact with the world as an adult, as doing so could expose her as a freak of nature to be feared and, consequently, harmed. But Abigail's true struggle isn't with a cruel outside world, but rather the irrevocable damage that her past self has already done. Trapped in her small body, Abigail must find a way to pull the tail out of the ouroboros's mouth, but first she will have to decide whether or not she even wants to break the cycle that is both her penance and her only chance for salvation.
Despite its supernatural premise, Gyre doesn't present itself as a fantasy novel: Once Abigail is reborn, there are no additional magical or paranormal elements to the story. Indeed, the metaphysical reason for Abigail's return remains a mystery, as it should considering that it is entirely irrelevant to her tale. Instead, Gyre is a story of family tragedies, fractured lives, and the inescapable reality that, far too often, the abused will grow to become the abuser.
As with the author's debut novel, Maej, the writing is flawless: neither bland nor overly garnished, striking the perfect tone for a straightforward narrative that stays laser-focused on Abigail. There are no major subplots or tangents to distract us as the story, at times painfully as if removing a stubborn bandage, gradually reveals the ugly truth of Abigail's past. Both despite and because of its dark twists and ambivalent, open-to-interpretation conclusion, I enjoyed Gyre immensely, finishing it in a single sitting, and so I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a quick, solid psychological mystery, provided they can stomach some scenes of physical and emotional abuse.
Whether you call Gyre a novel or a novella will likely depend on how avid a reader you are, but this short, minimalistic tale packs a powerful emotional punch, as the author crafts a deep, captivating tale of (past-)self-discovery and family bonds: one that starts off innocently charming, but gradually becomes darker as Abigail's memories begin to resurface.
Though much of the first-person narrative is told through the eyes of an infant growing into a young child, this is not a child's story. From the moment of her rebirth, Abigail is mentally very much an adult, with all the emotional baggage and lack of innocence that comes with maturity. Throughout her new infancy and early childhood, Abigail must constantly keep in check her burning desire to interact with the world as an adult, as doing so could expose her as a freak of nature to be feared and, consequently, harmed. But Abigail's true struggle isn't with a cruel outside world, but rather the irrevocable damage that her past self has already done. Trapped in her small body, Abigail must find a way to pull the tail out of the ouroboros's mouth, but first she will have to decide whether or not she even wants to break the cycle that is both her penance and her only chance for salvation.
Despite its supernatural premise, Gyre doesn't present itself as a fantasy novel: Once Abigail is reborn, there are no additional magical or paranormal elements to the story. Indeed, the metaphysical reason for Abigail's return remains a mystery, as it should considering that it is entirely irrelevant to her tale. Instead, Gyre is a story of family tragedies, fractured lives, and the inescapable reality that, far too often, the abused will grow to become the abuser.
As with the author's debut novel, Maej, the writing is flawless: neither bland nor overly garnished, striking the perfect tone for a straightforward narrative that stays laser-focused on Abigail. There are no major subplots or tangents to distract us as the story, at times painfully as if removing a stubborn bandage, gradually reveals the ugly truth of Abigail's past. Both despite and because of its dark twists and ambivalent, open-to-interpretation conclusion, I enjoyed Gyre immensely, finishing it in a single sitting, and so I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a quick, solid psychological mystery, provided they can stomach some scenes of physical and emotional abuse.
December 21, 2024
A challenging and engaging character study - a book I couldn't put down and won't stop thinking about.
"Amniotic fluid drained from my lungs; as they filled with air, a nameless horror bloomed, and I shrieked."
What does it mean to be reborn? With full knowledge, could anyone forgive themselves for a prior lifetime of mistakes, regrets, sins, doomed to be repeated?
Or maybe the narrative doesn't doom. Maybe our destruction is written in our own belief in genetics, in trauma, modern-day versions of predestination. Or maybe change would be possible, if we were the kind of person who reached for it.
Abigail loves crosswords, suduko, writes music like solving a puzzle, where there is a right answer, pieces to put into their correct place. This is a story fit for her, where all the pieces slot exactly where they've always belonged.
"Amniotic fluid drained from my lungs; as they filled with air, a nameless horror bloomed, and I shrieked."
What does it mean to be reborn? With full knowledge, could anyone forgive themselves for a prior lifetime of mistakes, regrets, sins, doomed to be repeated?
Or maybe the narrative doesn't doom. Maybe our destruction is written in our own belief in genetics, in trauma, modern-day versions of predestination. Or maybe change would be possible, if we were the kind of person who reached for it.
Abigail loves crosswords, suduko, writes music like solving a puzzle, where there is a right answer, pieces to put into their correct place. This is a story fit for her, where all the pieces slot exactly where they've always belonged.
July 26, 2025
I like this book as a structural experiment—I'm less sold on the actual content. Review to come.
May 18, 2025
“Somehow I did know these things. The deduction came in a rush: I had been alive before.”
The child arrives in the world. Where does its personhood come from? If it seems very different from its parents, whom is it copying? Could it have reincarnated, and if so, from whom?
Interpellation: you’re called and inevitably respond. At the beginning of every journey, others label or name you, and that’s your starting point. A police officer shouts, “Hey, you!," and you turn around, forming feelings and opinions of your situation and aware of your status within a hierarchy. (I wrote more on that)
Gyre is an absorbing story that feels like a mystery, with themes of parenting and protection. Enmeshed people keep each other going from their relational standpoints. A perpetual motion machine.
A few hours after closing the last page of Gyre, I identified the voice I'd imagined for Baby Abby: the noble beast in The Last Unicorn who said, "'I can never regret...I can sorrow...but it's not the same thing.'” It isn't the same, and Abby knows it.
The child arrives in the world. Where does its personhood come from? If it seems very different from its parents, whom is it copying? Could it have reincarnated, and if so, from whom?
Interpellation: you’re called and inevitably respond. At the beginning of every journey, others label or name you, and that’s your starting point. A police officer shouts, “Hey, you!," and you turn around, forming feelings and opinions of your situation and aware of your status within a hierarchy. (I wrote more on that)
Gyre is an absorbing story that feels like a mystery, with themes of parenting and protection. Enmeshed people keep each other going from their relational standpoints. A perpetual motion machine.
A few hours after closing the last page of Gyre, I identified the voice I'd imagined for Baby Abby: the noble beast in The Last Unicorn who said, "'I can never regret...I can sorrow...but it's not the same thing.'” It isn't the same, and Abby knows it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews