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Mirror Translation
Mirror Translation details three uncanny encounters between Americans abroad and their Eastern European mirrors. A foreign exchange student develops a disturbing dependency on her friend for hire. A couple becomes obsessed with a mysterious stripper. A young backpacker transitions from an unhealthy attachment to her ex-boyfriend to a bizarre, potential entrapment with a rural family. With their slow-building, atmospheric explorations, and their patiently exposing psychological striptease, these stories beckon the reader toward strange resemblances, refractions, and transferences of selfhood, posing the question: Who—and what—is the foreigner (and who decides)?
- GenresHorrorShort Stories
Paperback
First published March 15, 2025
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51 people want to read
About the author
Meghan Lamb
22 books80 followersAuthor of Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace) and Sacramento (Solar Luxuriance)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 3, 2025
"The night becomes the taste of licorice. The night becomes... Anna keeps wandering away, to dance awhile with men. Anna keeps leaving her with her back pressed against the glass, feeling lonely, drinking more shots from the waitress with the harness. The night becomes... Black, black, with bursts of red. A tall man, looming over her. A bald head. Another another one. Oh, no... that's just the mirror. Now he is laughing."
Mirror Translation is an insanely difficult novel to review. It's almost impossible to describe what this book actually is, yet, whatever it may be, it's something that I urge everyone to go and read. There's something so bleak about Mirror Translation, something so sad and lonely, it's like standing in the middle of a barren wasteland, devastating and distressing. It's also a confusing, hazy sort of novel, one that feels like the most demoralizing acid trip of your life. Surreal and bizarre, freakish, almost, yet beautiful and completely untamed, this is art in print form, this kind of thing is what reading should be about. Daring, bold and unusual books like this must be what the abyss looks like. It's such a rarity, for a book to leave me this at a loss for words.
In fact, any thoughts I did have upon finishing Mirror Translation were nothing but incoherent screams and some faint mumbling, because, finishing Mirror Translation made me feel as if my skin was decaying, falling from my body. It's a book that leaves an incredibly filthy feeling behind it, one that makes you need a good, long shower, not because it's sleazy in any way, because, it's not. It's just that, Mirror Translation evokes a very unusual emotion, and I'm still not sure what it actually is. A crushing, despairing hopelessness, mixed with acute horror and revulsion, maybe. Regardless of the actual name for the specific feeling this book conjures, it's something, I'm sure, will only be replicated upon my eventual descent to hell.
When I think about Mirror Translation, the word uncertainty springs to mind, because, throughout these strange stories, there lingers such beauty, but you have to wade through the fog of vagueness and absurdity to discover it. It's a real grim little thing, weighted down by this off-kilter, everything is very wrong atmosphere that's just dripping with dread. It's horror, yes, but it's a quiet, suppressed sort of horror, one that's sensual, poetic and horrible, akin to having deadly secrets whispered in your ear. There's no doubt that Mirror Translation is enrapturing, explaining it, or even doing my job as a reviewer, escapes me with this one. It's a book that feels like annihilation, it's a book that feels like the end of the world. Read it.
"But there was meaning in the meaninglessness - Novocaine-limbs, nothing-brain - the fog that she inflicted on herself. Between the moment he began unbuckling his belt - proclaiming, I've been waiting for this - and when he stood back up, and re-buckled his belt, saying, what did you expect, and what a disappointment, and - this resonates the most with her, within her - I have never been with such a dead fish. She doesn't want to be a dead fish. She did not set out to travel on her own - so brave, her ex-boyfriend commended her - to be a passive thing. A thing that doesn't feel. A thing that doesn't learn. A thing that doesn't move. A thing that doesn't come to life."
Mirror Translation is an insanely difficult novel to review. It's almost impossible to describe what this book actually is, yet, whatever it may be, it's something that I urge everyone to go and read. There's something so bleak about Mirror Translation, something so sad and lonely, it's like standing in the middle of a barren wasteland, devastating and distressing. It's also a confusing, hazy sort of novel, one that feels like the most demoralizing acid trip of your life. Surreal and bizarre, freakish, almost, yet beautiful and completely untamed, this is art in print form, this kind of thing is what reading should be about. Daring, bold and unusual books like this must be what the abyss looks like. It's such a rarity, for a book to leave me this at a loss for words.
In fact, any thoughts I did have upon finishing Mirror Translation were nothing but incoherent screams and some faint mumbling, because, finishing Mirror Translation made me feel as if my skin was decaying, falling from my body. It's a book that leaves an incredibly filthy feeling behind it, one that makes you need a good, long shower, not because it's sleazy in any way, because, it's not. It's just that, Mirror Translation evokes a very unusual emotion, and I'm still not sure what it actually is. A crushing, despairing hopelessness, mixed with acute horror and revulsion, maybe. Regardless of the actual name for the specific feeling this book conjures, it's something, I'm sure, will only be replicated upon my eventual descent to hell.
"She locks her eyes with his. Green eyes. Gold-green. A gold light, gleaming through the iris of her eye. A fog light, deep within the murk of something stagnant. He looks hard, into the golden gleaming, searching through that murk. Something inside her gaze, something that must be claimed, he thinks. I only need to look closely enough, look long enough, look hard enough, look deeply enough, to see through enough, to see clearly enough, to see through this moment for all its murk, and to see through this murk, to see the moment, to take hold of it, take hold, to take, to take..."
When I think about Mirror Translation, the word uncertainty springs to mind, because, throughout these strange stories, there lingers such beauty, but you have to wade through the fog of vagueness and absurdity to discover it. It's a real grim little thing, weighted down by this off-kilter, everything is very wrong atmosphere that's just dripping with dread. It's horror, yes, but it's a quiet, suppressed sort of horror, one that's sensual, poetic and horrible, akin to having deadly secrets whispered in your ear. There's no doubt that Mirror Translation is enrapturing, explaining it, or even doing my job as a reviewer, escapes me with this one. It's a book that feels like annihilation, it's a book that feels like the end of the world. Read it.
"But there was meaning in the meaninglessness - Novocaine-limbs, nothing-brain - the fog that she inflicted on herself. Between the moment he began unbuckling his belt - proclaiming, I've been waiting for this - and when he stood back up, and re-buckled his belt, saying, what did you expect, and what a disappointment, and - this resonates the most with her, within her - I have never been with such a dead fish. She doesn't want to be a dead fish. She did not set out to travel on her own - so brave, her ex-boyfriend commended her - to be a passive thing. A thing that doesn't feel. A thing that doesn't learn. A thing that doesn't move. A thing that doesn't come to life."
March 11, 2025
What a fascinating yarn Lamb has spun with Mirror Translation! Her evocative prose seamlessly blends the surreal, absurd, and beautiful through three strange tales exploring mysteriously vague parts of Eastern Europe. Certain passages involve sensuality meeting body horror in uniquely poetic ways. As an American myself, it’s refreshing to see a traditionally Western-centric perspective that frequently acts as if they’re the center of the universe instead treated as a foreigner (the dreaded “Other”) for a change.
The incredible cover art as well as the interior art by Shannon Hozinec perfectly complements the eerily menacing stories.
With a really good novella or short novel, I always find myself wanting more. I could read thirty other stories set in this frightening post-Soviet country! Hell, I’d watch a film or TV series set in it! The haunted, cursed feeling embedded in this strange land’s soil is felt in every page and I couldn’t get enough of it!
The incredible cover art as well as the interior art by Shannon Hozinec perfectly complements the eerily menacing stories.
With a really good novella or short novel, I always find myself wanting more. I could read thirty other stories set in this frightening post-Soviet country! Hell, I’d watch a film or TV series set in it! The haunted, cursed feeling embedded in this strange land’s soil is felt in every page and I couldn’t get enough of it!
March 16, 2025
An interesting trio of tales about travelers in foreign lands. Al Pacino was by far my favorite of the three which works out as it is the longest. The Space of Memory and Mirror Translation seem to emulate the structure of each other.
April 21, 2025
Three dark tales tied together by the sense of uncertainty you get when traveling in a foreign land where the language is not your own and you can't read people's intentions like you usually can. I liked Lamb's third-person viewpoint, which felt like a filmmaker moving through the tension of these travelers' unravelling. Deliciously dark and haunting.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews