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Other Worlds: Stories
The award-winning author of Fifteen Dogs conjures up worlds – real, invented, uncanny – in this ingenious, electrifying collection.
A Trinidadian Obeah man finds himself reborn, a hundred years after his death, in the body of a Canadian child. A writer takes up a seasonal job as the caretaker of a set of mysterious large sacks hanging from the rafters of the houses in a small town. A woman starts a relationship with the famous artist who painted portraits of her mother. The contents of a sealed envelope upend a woman’s understanding about a tragic crime she committed at the age of six.
In this dazzling collection of stories, André Alexis draws fresh connections between worlds: the ones we occupy, the ones we imagine, and the ones that preceded our own. He introduces us to characters during moments of profound puzzlement, and transports us from 19th century Trinidad and Tobago to small-town Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to contemporary Toronto.
These captivating stories reveal flashes of reckoning, defeat, despair, alienation, and understanding, all the while playfully using a multitude of literary genres, including gothic horror and isekai, and referencing works from greats like Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Yasunari Kawabata, Witold Gombrowicz, and Tomasso Landolfi.
Masterfully crafted, blending poignant philosophical inquiry and wry humour tinged with the absurd, here are worlds refracted and reflected back to us with pristine clarity and stunning emotional resonance as only André Alexis can.
A Trinidadian Obeah man finds himself reborn, a hundred years after his death, in the body of a Canadian child. A writer takes up a seasonal job as the caretaker of a set of mysterious large sacks hanging from the rafters of the houses in a small town. A woman starts a relationship with the famous artist who painted portraits of her mother. The contents of a sealed envelope upend a woman’s understanding about a tragic crime she committed at the age of six.
In this dazzling collection of stories, André Alexis draws fresh connections between worlds: the ones we occupy, the ones we imagine, and the ones that preceded our own. He introduces us to characters during moments of profound puzzlement, and transports us from 19th century Trinidad and Tobago to small-town Ontario, from Amherst, Massachusetts to contemporary Toronto.
These captivating stories reveal flashes of reckoning, defeat, despair, alienation, and understanding, all the while playfully using a multitude of literary genres, including gothic horror and isekai, and referencing works from greats like Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Yasunari Kawabata, Witold Gombrowicz, and Tomasso Landolfi.
Masterfully crafted, blending poignant philosophical inquiry and wry humour tinged with the absurd, here are worlds refracted and reflected back to us with pristine clarity and stunning emotional resonance as only André Alexis can.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2025
About the author
André Alexis
20 books641 followersAndré Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His most recent novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral (nominated for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize), Asylum, Beauty and Sadness, Ingrid & the Wolf, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Lambton, Kent and Other Vistas: A Play.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
November 10, 2025
If you know me in person you know that I'm absolutely obsessed with Alexis' writing style and the way he handles themes of language and home and that I can't shut up about it (I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not, you knew how I was when you decided to let me stick around). I have to do myself violence to not devour his back catalogue, this collection of short stories has done absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of violence I have to do myself.
Some of these stories flirted with horror quite heavily, the imagery often made it to the heavy petting stage with horror, and I was enthralled.
I loved the way locales were quietly made to be characters of their own, it was something that happened in the small details and small connections/parallels between stories and I was delighted by it.
I read this book while there was a minor kerfuffle in the boktok/boosta world about a reviewer who thought that words like personified and forwardness were thesaurus words and thusly berated the author for using big words so Alexis casually dropping words like phonemes made me chuckle. So, yeah, If you like an elegant use of language this book and author will most likely charm you.
Some of these stories flirted with horror quite heavily, the imagery often made it to the heavy petting stage with horror, and I was enthralled.
I loved the way locales were quietly made to be characters of their own, it was something that happened in the small details and small connections/parallels between stories and I was delighted by it.
I read this book while there was a minor kerfuffle in the boktok/boosta world about a reviewer who thought that words like personified and forwardness were thesaurus words and thusly berated the author for using big words so Alexis casually dropping words like phonemes made me chuckle. So, yeah, If you like an elegant use of language this book and author will most likely charm you.
May 16, 2025
New favourite author unlocked.
February 22, 2026
This was such a treat!
I’ve previously read two of Alexis’s books, from his “Quincunx” series (five interconnected but standalone stories), and come away somewhat puzzled but very clear that I wanted to read more of this author. And with this collection of short stories, we finally clicked.
André Alexis is best known for Fifteen Dogs, a…well… puzzling tale of Greek Gods testing their philosophical theories on a bunch of dogs in Toronto. A lot of people really loved this book, and it won Canada’s Giller Prize. I am not much interested in dogs, which is maybe why I preferred Ring, Alexis’s foray into writing a romance. I am not a romance reader, and he is not a romance writer, and perhaps that’s why I liked it so much.
In his final piece (“story” seems the wrong word) in this book, Alexis talks about genre experiments. His quincunx famously experimented with a new genre in each book: pastoral, apologue, romance, travel narrative, mystery. Here he is on my home turf: literary writing with a touch of the fantastic. Here he writes:
I’m careful to observe the conventions of a genre. It would be a fatuous game otherwise…when I begin writing in an unfamiliar genre, there is the fear that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m poaching on foreign ground.
He links this to his own sense of cultural homelessness, perpetually an immigrant but one who arrived as a small child, who should be at home, but isn’t entirely.
Many of these stories are also immigrant tales, originating or linked to Alexis’s birth country, Trinidad. In the opening novella, “Contrition: An Isekai,” a shaman in 19th century Trinidad dies and is reborn in the body of a teenage boy in contemporary Ontario. Though not all these stories are linked, this one will be invoked again, coming full circle. I absolutely adored this story, finding it very touching but also very funny.
I had already read “Houynhym,” in the New Yorker but its exploration of the death of a father by way of a talking horse rewarded a reread. And then we came to, what, for me, was the unexpected jewel of the collection. “Winter; Near Palgrave,” in which a writer spends winter in a small, unnamed town in Ontario, where the locals all hibernate naked in large sacks, and he must go and check on them throughout the winter. If that sounds like an unpromising premise—it isn’t at all.
Here, unfortunately, the collection and I hit a bit of a snag. Alexis has a very distinctive voice as a writer. It is very proper, very leisurely. All his sentences unfold very elegantly, with many subjective clauses. It’s a style that reminds me of writers who write English very proficiently but who are not native speakers and who learned it from books—Hisham Matar springs to mind. But Alexis is a native speaker, admittedly one who says he doesn’t feel at home in either his country or his language. Be that as it may, this authorial voice had been delighting me, calming me, and making me laugh, but when I hit a patch of weaker stories, it became very, very aggravating.
I was beginning to hate the book I had been loving so passionately, when luckily it picked up again in the last three stories.
While not quite the five star rave I was originally expecting, there are a handful of stories here that I consider simply perfect. It has some lovely, humane but also funny descriptions of character:
Médard Albouy did not dislike people. He had studied medicine and magic out of respect for those who stood to benefit most from his work: people. But he was one of those who love the idea of humanity while mistrusting specific instances of it.
Strangely, for a book called “Other Worlds,” and touching unapologetically on the fantastic, the magical elements of this book all felt very true to me. What felt other—which is I believe the point—was the quotidian world: A Southern Ontario that always felt like a place in a novel rather than a place I know somewhat, the parents who are sometimes “unfaithful, untruthful, unkind,” the languages that people speak or don’t speak, or speak only enough to know how much of the meaning they are missing.
In his final piece, Alexis reference the German unheimlich, the uncanny or literally the unhomely. This protean author, who slips between influences, languages and cultures to end in somewhere never quite real… is always that.
I’ve previously read two of Alexis’s books, from his “Quincunx” series (five interconnected but standalone stories), and come away somewhat puzzled but very clear that I wanted to read more of this author. And with this collection of short stories, we finally clicked.
André Alexis is best known for Fifteen Dogs, a…well… puzzling tale of Greek Gods testing their philosophical theories on a bunch of dogs in Toronto. A lot of people really loved this book, and it won Canada’s Giller Prize. I am not much interested in dogs, which is maybe why I preferred Ring, Alexis’s foray into writing a romance. I am not a romance reader, and he is not a romance writer, and perhaps that’s why I liked it so much.
In his final piece (“story” seems the wrong word) in this book, Alexis talks about genre experiments. His quincunx famously experimented with a new genre in each book: pastoral, apologue, romance, travel narrative, mystery. Here he is on my home turf: literary writing with a touch of the fantastic. Here he writes:
I’m careful to observe the conventions of a genre. It would be a fatuous game otherwise…when I begin writing in an unfamiliar genre, there is the fear that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m poaching on foreign ground.
He links this to his own sense of cultural homelessness, perpetually an immigrant but one who arrived as a small child, who should be at home, but isn’t entirely.
Many of these stories are also immigrant tales, originating or linked to Alexis’s birth country, Trinidad. In the opening novella, “Contrition: An Isekai,” a shaman in 19th century Trinidad dies and is reborn in the body of a teenage boy in contemporary Ontario. Though not all these stories are linked, this one will be invoked again, coming full circle. I absolutely adored this story, finding it very touching but also very funny.
I had already read “Houynhym,” in the New Yorker but its exploration of the death of a father by way of a talking horse rewarded a reread. And then we came to, what, for me, was the unexpected jewel of the collection. “Winter; Near Palgrave,” in which a writer spends winter in a small, unnamed town in Ontario, where the locals all hibernate naked in large sacks, and he must go and check on them throughout the winter. If that sounds like an unpromising premise—it isn’t at all.
Here, unfortunately, the collection and I hit a bit of a snag. Alexis has a very distinctive voice as a writer. It is very proper, very leisurely. All his sentences unfold very elegantly, with many subjective clauses. It’s a style that reminds me of writers who write English very proficiently but who are not native speakers and who learned it from books—Hisham Matar springs to mind. But Alexis is a native speaker, admittedly one who says he doesn’t feel at home in either his country or his language. Be that as it may, this authorial voice had been delighting me, calming me, and making me laugh, but when I hit a patch of weaker stories, it became very, very aggravating.
I was beginning to hate the book I had been loving so passionately, when luckily it picked up again in the last three stories.
While not quite the five star rave I was originally expecting, there are a handful of stories here that I consider simply perfect. It has some lovely, humane but also funny descriptions of character:
Médard Albouy did not dislike people. He had studied medicine and magic out of respect for those who stood to benefit most from his work: people. But he was one of those who love the idea of humanity while mistrusting specific instances of it.
Strangely, for a book called “Other Worlds,” and touching unapologetically on the fantastic, the magical elements of this book all felt very true to me. What felt other—which is I believe the point—was the quotidian world: A Southern Ontario that always felt like a place in a novel rather than a place I know somewhat, the parents who are sometimes “unfaithful, untruthful, unkind,” the languages that people speak or don’t speak, or speak only enough to know how much of the meaning they are missing.
In his final piece, Alexis reference the German unheimlich, the uncanny or literally the unhomely. This protean author, who slips between influences, languages and cultures to end in somewhere never quite real… is always that.
May 20, 2025
I finally got around to a Canadian author I’ve been meaning to read, wanting to read, feeling like I was the only book lover who hadn’t read him yet: André Alexis. His latest collection of short stories Other Worlds was released just a few weeks ago, and as May is short story month, I dove right in. He is best known for his award-winning novel Fifteen Dogs which won a TON of awards. It’s about a bunch of dogs who talk and live in their own world, so Alexis is no stranger to including the supernatural or magical in his work. Other Worlds is about just that; worlds like ours but incorporating an unexpected element of whimsical difference. And more talking animals, in this case, a horse.
Book Summary
There are 9 stories spread over 276 pages in this collection, so some are quite long. The stories aren’t linked, however the first and second last story seem to reference the same family, but they are told from such different perspectives that I can’t quite say that it’s the exact same people for certain. Regardless, both “Contrition: An Isekai” and “Consolation” are powerful stories on their own, the first following the rebirth of an old man into a young boy’s body 100 years later, while the second details a man’s musings about his parents’ marriage after his father dies. “Winter, or A Town Near Palgrave” is my favourite, but also the creepiest; it’s about a writer who is invited to take on a caretaking job in a town where all its inhabitants hibernate over the winter in burlap sacks hung up in their homes. “The Bridle Path” also has an uneasy atmosphere to it, where the protagonist is excited to be meeting new and very wealthy friends, but he missteps socially when he questions whether his hosts are cannibals. “Pu Songling: An Appreciation” is the strangest of the bunch, following a medicine man desperate to find an apprentice, but instead he discovers a young woman who he learns just as much from as they discuss their experiences with people returning from the dead.
My Thoughts
The very last story in the collection, “Elegy”, reads much like an analysis of what the author’s intentions were with the collection. The speaker is an author himself, and the life experiences he speaks about match of those of Alexis quite closely, so I’m assuming this character is meant to be a mouthpiece of sorts. In it he writes:
“Predictably, much of my work is a re-creation of the bewilderment that was a dominant emotion of my childhood self – bewilderment and resentment. Rather than directly expressing this bewilderment, however, I have tried to create worlds in which a sympathetic reader will feel a familiarity while struggling to interpret the appearance of certain things, certain signs, certain utterances” (p. 273 of Other Worlds by André Alexis, ARC edition)
I’m strangely desperate to think of myself as a sympathetic reader, but I wholeheartedly agree with what he set out to do, and I believe he accomplishes it. For example, “Houyhnhnm” is the story that incorporates the aforementioned talking horse, and although that is something that we would never recognize as part of our world, (or at least my current reality), the story isn’t about how weird this horse is. The story is about grief; it’s about the connection between the protagonist, the horse, and the protagonist’s parents. And as the story continues we discover it’s actually about the manifestation of grief, and how this grief looks different to all three characters.
Alexis uses these odd circumstances to capture the reader’s attention; the hanging bags of humans for instance. It’s an uncomfortable image, it begins to feel more like a work of horror as he interacts with this bags, even begins to ‘tend’ to them like a Queen Bee or something similar. And yet, it never crosses into the horrific, it leaves lingering questions about our tendency to hibernate in the colder months (at least up here in Canada) but it also addresses this question of creativity, and the distractions we create or focus on when avoiding doing our work, as the author does in this story.
I understand why Alexis’s work is so highly lauded now. There’s so many layers to his writing, and I suspect that if I re-read these stories, I’d continue to find threads I didn’t pick up on my first pass through. These magical elements may not appeal to some, but if you’re willing to just go with it, I think there’s lots to appeal to a wide range of readers here.
To read the rest of my reviews, please visit my blog:
https://ivereadthis.com/
Book Summary
There are 9 stories spread over 276 pages in this collection, so some are quite long. The stories aren’t linked, however the first and second last story seem to reference the same family, but they are told from such different perspectives that I can’t quite say that it’s the exact same people for certain. Regardless, both “Contrition: An Isekai” and “Consolation” are powerful stories on their own, the first following the rebirth of an old man into a young boy’s body 100 years later, while the second details a man’s musings about his parents’ marriage after his father dies. “Winter, or A Town Near Palgrave” is my favourite, but also the creepiest; it’s about a writer who is invited to take on a caretaking job in a town where all its inhabitants hibernate over the winter in burlap sacks hung up in their homes. “The Bridle Path” also has an uneasy atmosphere to it, where the protagonist is excited to be meeting new and very wealthy friends, but he missteps socially when he questions whether his hosts are cannibals. “Pu Songling: An Appreciation” is the strangest of the bunch, following a medicine man desperate to find an apprentice, but instead he discovers a young woman who he learns just as much from as they discuss their experiences with people returning from the dead.
My Thoughts
The very last story in the collection, “Elegy”, reads much like an analysis of what the author’s intentions were with the collection. The speaker is an author himself, and the life experiences he speaks about match of those of Alexis quite closely, so I’m assuming this character is meant to be a mouthpiece of sorts. In it he writes:
“Predictably, much of my work is a re-creation of the bewilderment that was a dominant emotion of my childhood self – bewilderment and resentment. Rather than directly expressing this bewilderment, however, I have tried to create worlds in which a sympathetic reader will feel a familiarity while struggling to interpret the appearance of certain things, certain signs, certain utterances” (p. 273 of Other Worlds by André Alexis, ARC edition)
I’m strangely desperate to think of myself as a sympathetic reader, but I wholeheartedly agree with what he set out to do, and I believe he accomplishes it. For example, “Houyhnhnm” is the story that incorporates the aforementioned talking horse, and although that is something that we would never recognize as part of our world, (or at least my current reality), the story isn’t about how weird this horse is. The story is about grief; it’s about the connection between the protagonist, the horse, and the protagonist’s parents. And as the story continues we discover it’s actually about the manifestation of grief, and how this grief looks different to all three characters.
Alexis uses these odd circumstances to capture the reader’s attention; the hanging bags of humans for instance. It’s an uncomfortable image, it begins to feel more like a work of horror as he interacts with this bags, even begins to ‘tend’ to them like a Queen Bee or something similar. And yet, it never crosses into the horrific, it leaves lingering questions about our tendency to hibernate in the colder months (at least up here in Canada) but it also addresses this question of creativity, and the distractions we create or focus on when avoiding doing our work, as the author does in this story.
I understand why Alexis’s work is so highly lauded now. There’s so many layers to his writing, and I suspect that if I re-read these stories, I’d continue to find threads I didn’t pick up on my first pass through. These magical elements may not appeal to some, but if you’re willing to just go with it, I think there’s lots to appeal to a wide range of readers here.
To read the rest of my reviews, please visit my blog:
https://ivereadthis.com/
November 13, 2025
4.75*
A stunning collection of short stories, all so different from one another yet connected by the same threads — themes of language, rebirth, identity, and death.
Stories of reincarnation, talking horses, spirituality. Stories of lessons passed down through generations. Stories that certainly felt otherworldly.
When I really pause to think about what I took away from this book, it’s how much I appreciate the way Alexis explores all of these ideas. The way language can be misunderstood, deciphered, interpreted and the implications of each of those actions. The possibility of death and rebirth, the explanations for things we can’t fully make sense of, but that happen anyway. The idea that maybe the reasons lie outside our own breadth of understanding.
But what I found most humbling, concerning, and oddly calming was this reminder that we really only know what we know and, to some extent, what we don’t. There will never come a time when we understand everything there is to know. We’ll always be seeking and searching, and maybe words will never do us justice… or maybe, they’ll simply be enough.
A stunning collection of short stories, all so different from one another yet connected by the same threads — themes of language, rebirth, identity, and death.
Stories of reincarnation, talking horses, spirituality. Stories of lessons passed down through generations. Stories that certainly felt otherworldly.
When I really pause to think about what I took away from this book, it’s how much I appreciate the way Alexis explores all of these ideas. The way language can be misunderstood, deciphered, interpreted and the implications of each of those actions. The possibility of death and rebirth, the explanations for things we can’t fully make sense of, but that happen anyway. The idea that maybe the reasons lie outside our own breadth of understanding.
But what I found most humbling, concerning, and oddly calming was this reminder that we really only know what we know and, to some extent, what we don’t. There will never come a time when we understand everything there is to know. We’ll always be seeking and searching, and maybe words will never do us justice… or maybe, they’ll simply be enough.
August 11, 2025
4 5 stars
If you've read Fifteen Dogs by this author you might understand how this collection of short stories can get under your skin.
To me some of these stories were more successful than others in the collection, but all were beautifully written and thought provoking with some being weirdly funny and some just kind of weird. But I liked them all.
If you've read Fifteen Dogs by this author you might understand how this collection of short stories can get under your skin.
To me some of these stories were more successful than others in the collection, but all were beautifully written and thought provoking with some being weirdly funny and some just kind of weird. But I liked them all.
September 15, 2025
In the quiet moments when I am thinking about nothing in particular, two books wander into my thoughts (this and “the Haunting of Hill House,” not to say that they are similar). I can’t stop thinking about Other Worlds. It is—phew—something. Stays with you, that’s for sure!
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February 23, 2026Hypnotic, majestic, enthralling, thrilling set of stories from a master writer, who can control the reader's emotions like a puppeteer with a string, first conjuring the creep of horror, then relief. In these stories, bewilderment, confusion, suspicions arise upon being thrust into first encounters with a different culture with a gulf of language. This gulf can arise from being of different cultures, different creatures, different times, different social situations. The passage of time, the cooling of heads, the repetition of contact, leads to rapprochement, even understanding. Communication leads to clarìty then catharsis for the displaced characters. With communication-- face to face conversations, missives from a different time-- the characters come to realize that the shadows cast by terrors are much bigger than the objects themselves.
The stories include (light spoilers on the premise follow):
The stories include (light spoilers on the premise follow):
July 12, 2026
I made it halfway but didn't finish the book. I very much enjoyed the first couple of stories: the fantastical elements were interesting plot twists and the fluid writing style was a pleasure to read. Then, however, I found the next few stories too eerie and off-putting to want to continue reading. It's more of a personal taste than anything else.
December 3, 2025
Great collection, with some more captivating than others. None were too short or too long, and some stories were loosely linked.
“The past preys on the present, but it does no harm, unless you let it.”
“The past preys on the present, but it does no harm, unless you let it.”
December 11, 2024
André Alexis is one of my fave authors so when I saw that he had a new book coming out I was so excited and I read this book right away. I loved Other Worlds! These short stories are so fun and showcases his true masterful storytelling. I really enjoyed his other short story collection The Night Piece and I can tell the evolution to this collection. I loved the nostalgia and how meta these stories are. Several of these stories draw from his life and experiences as they feature characters of Jamaican descent living in Canada and specifically Toronto. The specific mention of Shoppers Drug Mart selling “fresh food” was so funny. Several elements he featured in his previous books such as God and animals are in this book too. The last story which was autofiction was especially good. I’m so glad I got to read this book early!
Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for my ARC!
Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for my ARC!
October 11, 2025
Eh. I like this author. His work is very Murakami-like in that fantastic things happen in otherwise ordinary lives. And I liked a couple of the short stories in this book. But overall they felt more like stillborn novel ideas than true short stories. Too often the protagonist doesn’t seem changed by the weirdness or anything that happens in the story. It is more like, “this bizarre thing occurred, ended, and then my life went on.” Again, as if he started to write a novel and then realized it wasn’t going anywhere. Short stories also need to go somewhere. And to end on with a bang, not a sigh. Lotta sighs, sadly.
August 10, 2025
Andre Alexis casually throwing his hat into the ring for author of short stories that will haunt you for the rest of your life
January 21, 2026
Loved this. Mysterious short stories. Some shorter than others. Others more like little novellas. So good.
February 16, 2026
I started listening to this one and had to switch at the end of the first short story as I was struggling to follow and know when the story end vs chapter breaks were. It didn’t help that there was a character with the same name in the first two stories. I really enjoyed some of the stories and found others were just a bit too out there for me. Overall I’d give this one 3.5 ⭐️ rounded up to 4 for my goodreads rating.
March 26, 2026
Giller Prize 2025 longlist, Toronto Book Awards 2025 shortlist. The sense of mystery and eerieness deepens with every story. Many stories had a folklore vibe, some campfire stories, and yet a few psychological thrillers. This is one to reread time to time, just to see how the stories make you feel at different moments in your life.
May 28, 2026
Recommended by a friend. Took me soooo long to finish but at last I'm here. Not exactly my type of book in themes and writing but I do like some of the short stories in it. Also I kinda felt like the author's writing worked best in essay rather than fiction but maybe it's just me.
July 24, 2025
André Alexis is a Canadian national treasure
August 9, 2025
3.31 - a book of short stories just isn’t my thing. Many of them were weird too. It wasn’t unenjoyable to read, but I never felt the urge to pick it up and keep reading
November 20, 2025
Interesting and original stories! Liked, but didn't love.
August 1, 2026
Enchanting and captivating. My fav was the story of the horse.
November 8, 2025
first book for my new book club in Vancouver and absolutely loved it!! beautifully written and such an evocative but subtle depiction of diaspora through the stories. loved the blurry line between magic and medicine
October 21, 2025
“it is difficult to find home when neither you nor those around you are certain who you are and when no physical place corresponds to it” (from ‘an elegy’)
stories about belonging, about loneliness, about shame & delusion, about family, about connection. i need to reread this.
stories about belonging, about loneliness, about shame & delusion, about family, about connection. i need to reread this.
December 5, 2025
Some hits and misses, overall not bad. Not as other worldly as I was hoping, tho...
February 11, 2026
I really enjoyed the first half of the stories and I kinda liked the second half. 3.5.
July 8, 2025
I always look forward to new stories by André Alexis; his prose is gorgeous, his insight and inventiveness terrific, and this collection of short stories does not disappoint.
They range across history and countries, and consider relationships in families, art, the effects of colonialism, and immigration, but the stories within "Other Worlds" are not screeds or polemics. Each is a self contained world and uses humour, keen observation, fantasy and horror elements that are subtly dropped in, and all these together make for interesting reading.
I had my favourites:
-Contrition: An Isekai: where a obeah man misinterprets a colonizer's actions, dies, and is reborn as a descendant of the colonize.
-Houyhnhnm: A son deals with his grief over his father's death, by getting to know and care for his father's horse, who can talk.
-A Certain Likeness: A woman gets to know the artist who painted her mother's likeness years earlier.
-Pu Songling: An Appreciation: An elderly medicine mad is looking for an apprentice.
-An Elegy: An author writes of moving from Trinidad to Canada, and becoming a writer.
There are also images that lingered in my mind, though the one most shocking, was of human-sized bags hanging within houses…
I greatly enjoyed this collection, which again demonstrates Alexis' versatility, imagination, and sensitivity.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC in exchange for my review.
They range across history and countries, and consider relationships in families, art, the effects of colonialism, and immigration, but the stories within "Other Worlds" are not screeds or polemics. Each is a self contained world and uses humour, keen observation, fantasy and horror elements that are subtly dropped in, and all these together make for interesting reading.
I had my favourites:
-Contrition: An Isekai: where a obeah man misinterprets a colonizer's actions, dies, and is reborn as a descendant of the colonize.
-Houyhnhnm: A son deals with his grief over his father's death, by getting to know and care for his father's horse, who can talk.
-A Certain Likeness: A woman gets to know the artist who painted her mother's likeness years earlier.
-Pu Songling: An Appreciation: An elderly medicine mad is looking for an apprentice.
-An Elegy: An author writes of moving from Trinidad to Canada, and becoming a writer.
There are also images that lingered in my mind, though the one most shocking, was of human-sized bags hanging within houses…
I greatly enjoyed this collection, which again demonstrates Alexis' versatility, imagination, and sensitivity.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC in exchange for my review.
July 8, 2025
Every once in a while I come across a book that is just my brand of weird and Other Worlds is one of those books. I absolutely loved the stories in this book for how unsettling they were. The word he used in his Elegy section, “bewilderment” is exactly the feeling conjured by this collection. A lot of people don’t like to sit in that kind of discomfort and confusion, but I adored this.
April 11, 2026
Some stories were better than others. For the most part, I enjoyed the concepts and ideas that Alexis explores in these, though the execution varied a bit. I did love the overall sense of surrealism, oddities and dialogue.
I could've done without the mini meta essay at the end, it didn't add anything in terms of understanding the stories or how Alexis works with fiction and language. It felt like a summary that was tacked onto the end in case you didn't "get it", which just diminished the fiction's ability to speak for itself.
I could've done without the mini meta essay at the end, it didn't add anything in terms of understanding the stories or how Alexis works with fiction and language. It felt like a summary that was tacked onto the end in case you didn't "get it", which just diminished the fiction's ability to speak for itself.
October 3, 2025
While Other Worlds is undeniably well-written, with complete, engaging short stories, strong characters, and satisfying conclusions, the subject matter just didn’t resonate with me personally. Many of the stories draw from Alexis's background and cultural experience, which, while authentic and insightful, revolved around experiences and themes that I found hard to relate to. I can appreciate the craft and quality here, but ultimately, it wasn't a collection I enjoyed.
August 14, 2025
Too weird for my liking. I can't fault the writing but rather the content - way too many corpses and other worldly things for me.
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