What do you think?
Rate this book
Lost Objects
"Kingfisher" Shortlisted for the BSFA Awards 2018! Nominated for the BSFA Awards 2018! These stories explore place and landscape at different stages of decay, positioning them as fighting grounds for death and renewal. From dystopian Andalusia to Scotland or the Norfolk countryside, they bring together monstrous insects, ghostly lovers, soon-to-be extinct species, unexpected birds, and interstellar explorers, to form a coherent narrative about loss and absence. “An intriguing and illuminating first collection, chockfull of interesting ideas about the natural world and ourselves.” Jeff VanderMeer , NYT Bestselling author of The Southern Reach trilogy “Luminous and disturbing as the unearthly things they describe, Marian Womack’s gorgeously written tales map the shifting boundaries between waking life and dream, past and future and our own profoundly unsettled present. Reading them left me with goosebumps, and the craving for more stories by this supremely gifted new writer.” Liz Hand “The earth is in trouble and Marian Womack knows it. She tells us that the end, and what comes after, will be very weird indeed. These stories, where birds drop from the sky and giant butterflies haunt the imagination, fizz with a unique and strange originality.” Gary Budden “Marian Womack weaves together the lyricism of Angela Carter, the mad imagination of China Miéville, and the earthiness of Robert Macfarlane. This book--an aviary of the strange, a vital evocation of wild and fleeting spirits--marks the emergence of a fantastic new talent.” Helen Marshall , World Fantasy Award-winning author of Gifts for the One Who Comes After “These short story gems dance at the edge of the world, finding poetry in loss and devastation. Marian Womack is an artist with a unique and powerfully-wrought vision.” Una MacCormack
142 pages, Paperback
First published July 3, 2018
7 people are currently reading
266 people want to read
About the author
Marian Womack
58 books85 followersMarian Womack is a bilingual writer born in Andalusia and educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford. She is currently completing a part-time Masters Degree in Creative Writing at Cambridge University, and recently graduated from the Clarion Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writer’s Workshop at USCD. She is co-editor of the academic book Beyond the Back Room: New Perspectives on Carmen Martín Gaite (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), and of The Best of Spanish Steampunk (forthcoming, 2015). In Spanish she has published the cycle of intertwined tales Memoria de la Nieve (Zaragoza: Tropo, 2011), has co-authored the YA novel Calle Andersen (Barcelona: La Galera, 2014), and has contributed to more than fifteen anthologies of short fiction, the most recent Alucinadas (Gijón: Palabaristas, 2014), the first Spanish language all-female SF anthology. Her journalism and critical writing on Spanish literature, culture and society have appeared on a variety of English speaking academic journals, as well as the Times Literary Supplement, the New Internationalist, and the digital version of El País. She has fiction forthcoming in English in Weird Fiction Review. Chosen by literary magazine Leer in its 30th anniversary as one of the thirty most influential people in their thirties in Spain’s literary scene, she is also a prolific translator, and runs a small press in Madrid, Ediciones Nevsky.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 23, 2018
I loved Lost Objects because of its exquisite prose, mesmerizing imagery, and apocalyptic/postapocalyptic vision that was anything but dark and depressing. Womack has the gift of bringing other/future worlds to life such that we lose ourselves completely in her vision. I enjoyed "Black Isle" because of its nuanced exploration of the impacts of bioengineering on an ecosystem. I loved "The Ravisher, The Thief" for its unsettling take on spontaneous black holes popping up around the planet and a suicidal religion that springs up to meet it. And then there's "Kingfisher," with its poignant depiction of disappointment and expectation, wrapped up in a nearly-extinct bird in a world almost emptied of its animals and birds. I hope to see much more from Womack because my brain demands more collections like this one.
July 2, 2018
These are gorgeously written and chilling stories of worlds in which nature has responded to our abuses in strange and uncanny ways. Most take place in post-climate changed worlds, in which animals have taken on the role of mythological beings, the familiar landscape has been warped and changed by encroaching waters and shifting biomes, and the beautiful is made monstrous—though always in the way of quiet, creeping dread. These are subtle stories that stick with you long after reading. "Orange Dogs," "Black Isle," and "Kingfisher" are especially powerful, though each story in the whole collection shines.
July 12, 2018
Coincido en un 70% con las filias temáticas que se muestran aquí. Si encima la autora tiene ideas buenísimas, y un ojo para la ambientación que da miedo, pues cómo no me va a gustar. Alguno de los relatos es demasiado weird para mí, pero mira, no me voy a quejar.
November 11, 2018
A luminous collection of beautiful and haunting short stories. In every story, the world and the people and creatures in it seem in the process of changing and transforming. Landscapes, animals and humans seem to shiver between dream and nightmare, between one state of being and another and the stories capture that uncertain state in all its dark glory.
Dark, weird, and memorable speculative fiction.
Dark, weird, and memorable speculative fiction.
February 13, 2019
Wonderful first collection from Marian Womack, essential reading for any fans of short fiction, or of 'new weird' writing in general. Some fantastic(al) imagery throughout, especially in the longer stories.
January 29, 2022
Wonderful eerie stories exploring our relationship with nature; fantasy, horror and SF combine to create very impressive short fiction collection
Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
Full review - https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/bl...
July 5, 2018
Review coming soon over at Weird Fiction Review.
It's up: over there now: check it out!
It's up: over there now: check it out!
July 28, 2018
Buen libro de relatos de Marian Womack con un fuerte componente “weird” que explota en los finales, siempre desconcertantes y a un paso de lo inexplicable. Aunque hay motivos que se repiten —la naturaleza en declive, el simbolismo de las aves, la pérdida…— y el parentesco entre los distintos relatos es claro, Womack juega con distintos registros y consigue un libro variado. Personalmente me quedo con “Little Red Drops” y su juego de referencias, lo sugerente de “The ravisher, the thief” y el mundo que pinta con cuatro pinceladas, y el personal y emotivo “Kingfisher”. Es un libro muy consistente con la sensibilidad que ya había mostrado Marian como editora. Recomendado.
September 7, 2022
This is a collection of short stories with leanings towards fantasy and Science Fiction. I’m not sure why the ligature st and the one for ct which I cannot reproduce here have been employed on the front and back covers of this, unless it’s to hint at a certain strangeness within. Then there’s the determinedly lower case of the title and author’s name. A statement of some sort.
Orange Dogs is set in a prone-to-flood, global-warmed, environmentally degraded University city where the books have all gone, as has most technology. A man whose wife is on the point of giving birth (again) is haunted by the miscarried child he had to dispose of a year or so earlier. The Orange Dogs of the title are symbols of the end-times; huge swallowtail butterflies. (Their colours are actually yellow-brown with large blue spots.)
Little Red Drops plays with allusions to Little Red Riding Hood in its tale of a woman escaping to the Andalusian wilds to banish the memories of a faithless lover by using the ancient lore of blood for blood.
Told in sections titled 0001 to 0016 Black Isle tells how the engineered species designed by XenoLab, the company our narrator works for, are succumbing to a stranger disease. It evokes the landscape of the Beauly Firth very well.
Stones are a possible portal to other worlds from one where an exaggerated Iron Lady presides over a Great Britain divorced from external alliances and even from trade with the outside world. Narrator Raven belongs to a family who operate the Eye, a camera obscura surveilling the mining town of four vast Pit Heads extracting quartz, coal, ether.
In the less than two page long Love (Ghost) Story the narrator cannot shake off images of her dead lover to whom nothing can compare.
The Ravisher, The Thief sees a young woman called to render her language knowledge in service to her community. She - as do others of the priestly caste - has a mental link to a bird of prey.
Prefixed by Captain Oates’s supposed last words, Frozen Planet reframes Scott’s Antarctic Expedition as a blighted exploration of an alien planet – with added howling creature and either a hallucination or a portal to another world.
Marvels Do Not Oftimes Occur tells of how two kinds of vessel appeared in the sky over a central European city on April 5th 1561, and burned the churches before vanishing again.
Kingfisher has echoes of The Yellow Wallpaper in its tracking of the relationship of a married woman with her husband in a world where birds have disappeared.
A Place for Wild Beasts. A woman is plagued by a deer devouring the plants in her city garden.
Orange Dogs is set in a prone-to-flood, global-warmed, environmentally degraded University city where the books have all gone, as has most technology. A man whose wife is on the point of giving birth (again) is haunted by the miscarried child he had to dispose of a year or so earlier. The Orange Dogs of the title are symbols of the end-times; huge swallowtail butterflies. (Their colours are actually yellow-brown with large blue spots.)
Little Red Drops plays with allusions to Little Red Riding Hood in its tale of a woman escaping to the Andalusian wilds to banish the memories of a faithless lover by using the ancient lore of blood for blood.
Told in sections titled 0001 to 0016 Black Isle tells how the engineered species designed by XenoLab, the company our narrator works for, are succumbing to a stranger disease. It evokes the landscape of the Beauly Firth very well.
Stones are a possible portal to other worlds from one where an exaggerated Iron Lady presides over a Great Britain divorced from external alliances and even from trade with the outside world. Narrator Raven belongs to a family who operate the Eye, a camera obscura surveilling the mining town of four vast Pit Heads extracting quartz, coal, ether.
In the less than two page long Love (Ghost) Story the narrator cannot shake off images of her dead lover to whom nothing can compare.
The Ravisher, The Thief sees a young woman called to render her language knowledge in service to her community. She - as do others of the priestly caste - has a mental link to a bird of prey.
Prefixed by Captain Oates’s supposed last words, Frozen Planet reframes Scott’s Antarctic Expedition as a blighted exploration of an alien planet – with added howling creature and either a hallucination or a portal to another world.
Marvels Do Not Oftimes Occur tells of how two kinds of vessel appeared in the sky over a central European city on April 5th 1561, and burned the churches before vanishing again.
Kingfisher has echoes of The Yellow Wallpaper in its tracking of the relationship of a married woman with her husband in a world where birds have disappeared.
A Place for Wild Beasts. A woman is plagued by a deer devouring the plants in her city garden.
December 8, 2024
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/lost-objects-by-marian-womack/
I got this collection back in 2019 when one of the stories, ‘Kingfisher’, was on the BSFA shortlist. I wrote then of “Kingfisher”:
"A very different, grim story of a relationship breaking down in a near future world where we have had environmental catastrophe and yet middle-class struggle against harsh economic reality continues, as does the battle against patriarchy. Vividly realised and tautly told. "
It got my second preference (my first pref went to Time Was, by Ian McDonald, which won).
The collection as a whole addresses human relationships in the coming environmental apocalypse, and does that from an impressive variety of different angles. (There are a couple of exceptions but this covers most of them.) I was hooked with the very first story, “Orange Dogs”, set in a devastated Cambridge where books have almost vanished and babies come with huge difficulty. It’s a tremendous short body of work, containing more than half of Womack’s short fiction to date (and she has another collection coming out).
I got this collection back in 2019 when one of the stories, ‘Kingfisher’, was on the BSFA shortlist. I wrote then of “Kingfisher”:
"A very different, grim story of a relationship breaking down in a near future world where we have had environmental catastrophe and yet middle-class struggle against harsh economic reality continues, as does the battle against patriarchy. Vividly realised and tautly told. "
It got my second preference (my first pref went to Time Was, by Ian McDonald, which won).
The collection as a whole addresses human relationships in the coming environmental apocalypse, and does that from an impressive variety of different angles. (There are a couple of exceptions but this covers most of them.) I was hooked with the very first story, “Orange Dogs”, set in a devastated Cambridge where books have almost vanished and babies come with huge difficulty. It’s a tremendous short body of work, containing more than half of Womack’s short fiction to date (and she has another collection coming out).
February 1, 2019
Me gusta mucho lo que cuenta, me gusta mucho como lo cuenta, pero no me gusta nada como lo resuelve. Siempre termino con la sensación de un cierre en falso, un "este... ¿Qué acabo de leer? Entiendo que, como lector, se me exige un trabajo interpretativo, pero lo cierto es que doy para lo que doy, y la weird fantasy me supera un poco. Me ocurre lo mismo con Nina Allan, Karin Tindbek o Anna Starobinets. Eso no significa que no me haya gustado, algunos me han gustado muchísimo, pero casi siempre con un regusto final amargo.
November 22, 2019
This collection lingered long after I'd finished it. It's a beautifully written warning to the modern world about what we're doing to the planet and each other.
I had also thought for most of my life that seahorses weren't real, and when Jonas explained to me that they had really existed I laughed at him. I thought they were mythological creatures like fairies or unicorns. No, unicorns had apparently existed as well, he claimed. But I knew he was wrong. He was just too arrogant to admit it. - "Kingfisher" by Marian Womack
July 6, 2018
Lost Objects is a beautiful, haunting eulogy to our planet.
February 25, 2019
Womack blends near-future climate-anxiety kitchen sink dramas (a la Kate Marvel) with weird surroundings and storylines and compelling characters to create a story collection that is unlike anything else I've ever read. Highly recommended.
February 22, 2021
If you enjoy apocalyptic, weird fiction with a little bit of horror, you'll enjoy this collection of short stories. Marian Womack speculates what the world might look like in our future if climate change is not addressed. Some of the stories, I didn't really understand. But her prose is beautifully written, and if you read this for nothing else, read it for "Kingfisher".
"Perhaps this was what getting older meant, realising that you cannot fix everything."
"...after years of expensive academic education, we had absolutely no practical skills. Sometimes it felt as if all the sacrifices that my parents had made to provide me with a better future had been for nothing."
"When I was student I had read about a famous American poet who had also wanted to do more than one thing. But to her, wanting everything had not left her paralysed like it had me: she became a famous poet after all. She had also ended up with her head inside an oven, but even so she had not been gobbled up by history, as had happened to so many women who had managed to do even one of the things they wanted to do."
July 7, 2020
Highlights include "Orange Dogs", "Little Red Drops", "The Ravisher, the Thief", "Kingfisher", and the exceptional "Black Isle".
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews