This House of Wounds

by Georgina Bruce

The devastating debut short story collection from British Fantasy Award-winning author Georgina Bruce. Haunting and visceral tales for the lost and the lonely. An emotional and riveting debut.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction

248 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2019

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of stories, full of magical realism with a touch of horror. If you are a fan of David Lynch's movies or Rebecca Grandsen's books then you'll really enjoy this. I loved everything about this book from the stunning cover (which my daughter says is the creepiest ever) to the stories themselves, including their mad titles.

The stories themselves touch on similar topics, absent mothers (absent in various ways), mirrors and the fractures they create when broken, pain and release and crows....the crows play a major part in the horror side of this book. You get a nice range of stories, some dystopias, some from the point of view of children, stories that blur the lines between fantasy and reality, scary ones and moving ones.

Whilst most stories here are excellent there is one that stood out way above the others, "White Rabbit" is a powerful story, incredibly moving and left me with a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, reading about a character as his mind slowly unravels was so sad. It was the perfect story to bring the book to a close.

This was the first thing I've read by Georgina Bruce and I'm hooked, I've been checking out her blog recently and there is some great stuff there too.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...

[Karl]

Cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein.

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite things about some authors is when they have a very distinct affinity for certain "theme words". As I read Georgina Bruce's luxurious prose, I was taking copious notes for this review.
Some theme words that stand out to me: Blood, Mirrors, Shadows.
Lots of imagery about the female body, slits, slips, openings, velvet...
Themes of Alice in Wonderland, self-discovery, womanhood, reflection...
Dreaming.
Escapism.
Losing one's identity.
Finding yourself.
Objectification and oppression.
Also, plenty of genres here to appeal to a variety of particular readers:
Lyrical prose-almost poetic
Dystopian
Horror
Feminism
Dark Fantasy
Sci-Fi
My favorite stories were: The Lady of Situations which had a very WESTWORLD vibe to me.
Red Queening and White Rabbit
Cat World was devastatingly beautiful and haunting. I shall never forget it.
The book of Dreems & The Shadow Men took some time for me to find my bearings but as soon as I felt like I understood, I really enjoyed them.
There were some stories that I never really could find my footing in while I was reading them. I stumbled through the rich descriptions and language trying to make sense of what I was reading but I never arrived. A few I skipped after reading a few pages. (I'm not smart enough! Waaaah)
Anyhow,
I love Georgina's voice and I hope to read a novel from her soon. I recommend this collection to readers who enjoy strong, feminine themes, richly lyrical prose and a variety of stories.
Potential triggers for sexual abuse.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Georgina Bruce has covered ALL THE BASES in her debut story collection This House of Wounds and seems to be hell bent on stretching us beyond our comfort zones right from the get-to. There's no easing us in, no honeymoon phase, no whetting of the appetite here. She goes from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, so make sure you're buckled up good and tight. Kicking things off with The Lady of Situations, we're lead to believe we're reading about a woman who's in the middle of a pretty fucked up mental breakdown until wait a minute, holy shiiiit, what the fuck am I reading, and then we're like ok, I got you now bitch, I see how you are, you're fucking WICKED, and we're totally ok with that. And even though we're definitely on the outside of things, we're willing to follow along to see what fucked up places she's going to take us.

Recurring themes weave themselves throughout the collection - messed up mommies, mirrors and knives, bears and oceans, crows and feathers, mental illness, and sexual depravity and assault all find homes here. There are haunted houses (Kuebiko), dystopian towns (Wake Up, Phil), glitching robots, and bird people. There's magical gum that temporarily transports its chewer into another reality (Cat World), a gaming pod that propells the player into a twisted Alice in Wonderland simulation (Red Queening), and a man who suffers the loss his shadow (The Shadow Men).

A brilliantly executed mindfuck of a debut with a bitchin' cover to boot.

[exorcismemily · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This fucking world. Dying at the edges. Sick all the way through. Everyone wired into that game, that madness."

This House of Wounds was my introduction to Georgina Bruce's writing. I buddy read this one with my friends Tracy and Audra, and we definitely had some interesting discussions while reading.

Georgina Bruce's writing is so beautiful. Her descriptions are creative and haunting, and I would kill to read a book of poetry written by her. I think this book does a great job at showing off her talent.

However, I really struggled with several of the stories. Although I enjoyed the writing, quite a few of the stories were confusing, and I couldn't make sense of them even after discussing with my fellow buddy readers. At times, it felt like only the author was meant to understand what was going on, and this was frustrating for me. It was kind of like learning half a secret, and then the rest is dangled in front of you without any additional information or closure. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how I felt...almost like I was left out of the resolution. Maybe I'm the problem, but I don't think I was the only one who had a difficult time with this book. I feel like I can't rate this collection any higher because I have no idea what was going on most of the time.

My top 5 stories are Cat World, The Book of Dreems, The Queen of Knives, White Rabbit, and Red Queening. Honestly, these ones were the ones I had the best grasp of, and I'm still not sure with some of them.

Although I had issues, this book really is a gorgeous collection, and there's a lot to love here. Again, I would absolutely love to read poetry from Georgina Bruce if it ever exists. Thank you to Undertow Publications for sending me a copy to review.

[Jack Stark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second Read
Just fantastic. I think The Queen of Knives is one of my all time favourite short stories. There is so much in it.

First Read
Wow oh wow. My oh my. I am blown away. Speechless (almost). An example of outstanding short stories, consistent in high quality and substance. Many of them broke me.

Strange. Dreamlike. Surreal. Lynch-esque. Barely tethered to the here. Unsettling little mind snacks that creep in from the other side, keeping one eye on the possible. Creep in to tear at the heart. Melancholic in flavour, and plentiful in size. Full of WTF moments. Disturbing, yet familiar and comforting. Heavy with metaphor, saying more than what is said. No room for duds here. Each story a mini masterpiece.

I like. My favourite read of the year.

[Audra (ouija.reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This House of Wounds is a dark, experimental short story collection that is interested in identity, specifically that of the feminine, and the fracturing and remaking of selves along with the dissonance between the real and the imagined.

Bruce’s writing is quite unique, creating half-formed grotesqueries and fantasies in my mind, things I could almost picture but were still insubstantial, dissipating like wisps of fog when I tried to really grab ahold and unpack them. It was beautiful to read, but I often found myself struggling to see through the layers to what was actually happening in the plot. This obfuscation sometimes added a dreamy layer to an already phantasmagorical wonderland, and sometimes frustrated.

I definitely latched on more to the stories that I could more easily follow plotwise, which is not to say that those stories were by any means simple. Each one offers new worlds, like in “Cat World,” where there is dissonance between the horrors that young girls are subjected to in the real world and a mysterious place they can experience when they chew a stick of special gum. In “Wake Up, Phil,” the fracturing of identity is tied up in an Orwellian futuristic product war that has the main character doubting every aspect of her life and self. “Little Heart” offers a thesis statement on how our identities are created, with a great collision of memory, experience, and action—some of it real, some of it learned, some of it imagined.

I was glad to have two smart reading buddies—Tracy and Emily—around to bounce some ideas and questions off of while reading through this collection. It is definitely a difficult read that takes some dedication, and while I struggled with some of the stories, I ended the collection with an understanding that sometimes, it was just better to let the magnetic writing and viscera of images flow over, even if I didn’t fully understand the content.

My thanks to Undertow Publications for sending me this one to read and review.

[Priya Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This House of Wound is a challenging collection which proves the point that nothing worth having comes easily. I’m still thinking about what the book as a whole means. Don’t be put off by this. It’s an investment that will pay dividends.

Georgina Bruce’s prose is dense, lush, sometimes overripe, sometimes surrealist, depending on the needs of the story.

I dreamed that her eyes were eggs that hatched two bald featherless birds with wide-open beaks, carmine throats, screaming like empty leather purses. (Kuebiko)

The stories are shot through with unifying threads of women being shattered both physically and emotionally, then remade. Of abuses of power on many different levels, of how reality is distorted by said power to keep the protagonists questioning their own sanity, how the mantle of power is gifted or seized. Of sisters, mothers and lovers.

“Don’t break my heart.” He spat the words out, forcing her head down into the pillow, tearing her hair from the tender wound. “Don’t be like all the others.” (The Book of Dreems)

Some of the work, such as Crow Voodoo, draws comparison with Audrey Niffenneger’s graphic novels, except that Georgina Bruce is more brutal. Others evokes Angela Carter, but instead of wolf-maidens or Red Riding Hood, we have the magnificent Queen Beast:

In a night that was like the mouth of a bear, a thick tangled forest of a night, the Queen Beast walked. She was tall and deeply rooted as a tree. Vines tangled under her boots as she stalked the night with her high legged walk…. (The Shadow Men).

I suspect some readers will be drawn to the more accessible pieces here (Cat World, The Art Lovers) but there are greater joys to be had in the more difficult work (The Shadow Men, The Queen of Knives). If Georgina Bruce is demanding of her readers, she’s as equally demanding of herself. She has technical skill in spades, which you can see in the varying styles she uses. But she also has courage to write what she feels, not just what she thinks, which elevates this above an intellectual exploration of pain.

Long live the Queen. (The Queen of Knives)

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Georgina Bruce's debut collection dives into the realms of dark fantasy/horror. Side note to state that the cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein is absolutely spectacular and it represents the collection quite well. While all of these stories are standalone, there are common themes of loss, grief, toxic relationships, and alternate realities. There are even a few that put me in mind of some of the more fantastical Black Mirror episodes. It certainly is, I think, a commentary on how we experience life, love, and loss, and how society might shape those things.

I did struggle at times to even come close to understanding several of these stories. Not because the writing is bad, it is beautiful and organic, but because for me the narrative thread was too surreal, too thin, for me to have anything to grab on to. Bruce definitely has the ability to paint a literary picture. I actually read this with a couple of friends, Emily and Audra, and one of the things that we all agreed on was that Bruce would definitely shine at poetry and/or flash fiction. Some of these longer stories were so lush and so surreal that it was lost on me and I just couldn't connect.

That being said, I did have some absolute favorites in this collection. All of these really resonated and I loved the balance of real and imaginary.

"Cat World" - This centers around two young girls trying to survive in a world that preys on young girls. I really loved the travelling (whether real or imaginary) and the alternate universe in this one. Definite 5 star read for me.

"The Book of Dreems" - "She sensed herself dissolving into the thick, inky void and was afraid." Ooh I HATED the husband in this one. This one also boasts a form of surreal reality, patriarchy, and more. 4 stars for me.

"Wake Up, Phil" - This is another 5 star story for me. It reminds me a bit of Black Mirror and deals with a reality in which two factions of society are at war. The main character experiences major breaks in time and reality which can be difficult to follow but I absolutely enjoyed it.

"Little Heart" - Brokenness, sorrow, memory, and family are the highlights here. "Only when something breaks can you finally understand its true function and character" is a quote I really loved from this one. 4.5 stars.

and finally there is the last story in the collection, "White Rabbit". Guess what? Another 5 star story. This is another one that definitely has some bizarro elements as we watch an older man deal with the death of his wife. "He was meant to take her inside himself and hold her there, and instead the house took her inside herself and wouldn't let her go."

This collection is out on 4 June 2019.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm an Undertow subscriber and received my copy a few weeks ago. This House of Wounds is the best short story collection I’ve read this year. After I finished, I had to put it down, take a breath, and find my place in the world again. Georgina Bruce is an amazing writer, and I am most definitely a fan after reading her collection. Her work is unique but has the lush surrealness of Leonora Carrington’s short fiction and the exquisite imagery of Tanith Lee. This is the best type of weird fiction. I read several of the stories multiple times and plan to read the book again. All of the stories are good, with standouts being: World, Keubiko, The Queen of Knives, The Book of Dreems, The Seas of the Moon. I had come across Georgina Bruce’s stories in Black Static and The Dark, but reading all of these stories in order, seeing the threads that bind them collectively, made me a fan.

[Daniel Carpenter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply strange collection of stories that I completely fell in love with, rangeing from the Aickman esque The Art Lovers, to the sci-fi backdrop of Cat World but feel of a whole.Bruce is operating on a higher tier than most authors, and these stories adopt dream logic in wonderful ways. Some might think of them as fairytales, but I felt they were less morally focussed. Georgina Bruce is not here to teach us lessons, to warn children about strangers, or to find happy endings. These are tough stories, uncompromising in their weirdness, and as a result they won't be for everyone, but they'll wurm their way under the skin for a number of people.

[Andrew Schultheis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found the stories in this collection to be very hit or miss with me. Genre-wise the work tends to be a mix of fantasy, horror and sci-fi. Two stories in particular "Wake up, Phil" and "The Art Lovers" were excellent. The slow building dread and paranoia of "Wake up, Phil" is truly nightmarish. I also really liked "Little Heart" and "The Book of Dreems."

I thought the stories that were less straight forward narrative-wise were far less interesting. They were very surreal and heavily symbolic and seemed more Fantasy oriented. And though the language in these stories is gorgeous and the imagery striking they simply did not do it for me.

[Stewart Horn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first thing you’ll notice about this book is the cover: it’s one of the most beautiful images I’ve ever seen, and printed on good quality, lightly textured card that almost feels alive. It’s a sensual delight and a joy to touch, to hold, to open. It’s a promising start and warms me to the book before I’ve read a word.

Upon starting the first story, I realise how perfect the cover is. THE LADY OF SITUATIONS begins with an act of shocking violence, as if the image has leaked into the prose with images of blood, flowers, internal organs. It becomes an expressionist portrait of abuse, misogyny and escape, told in beautiful dreamlike prose. It’s an arresting start.

The themes established in the opening tale are continued, expanded and embellished throughout. Ms. Bruce is not one for linear narrative or an easy distinction between reality, dreams, analogy, art, intoxication and self-deceit. In many ways the whole book is an exploration how we distance ourselves from reality, and from ourselves.

RED QUEENING channels themes from Lewis Carroll through the distorted lenses of Harlan Ellison, Ramsay Campbell, and Clive Barker. Again it’s a surreal nightmare with a glimpse of hope at the end. HER BONES THE TREES lulls us into a false sense of security with dialogue between characters and something like a narrative, but the very internal pov and extreme sensuality keep everything distant. It’s about sex and death and transformation, but you can only see tiny fragments of anything and have to create the story for yourself.

In a dystopian future in which the only industry still thriving is child prostitution, the young victims survive by chewing travel gum, which transports them to the virtual CAT WORLD.  Several of the stories feature abusive men exploiting powerless girls – misogyny is a recurring theme, including in THE BOOK OF DREEMS. More like a traditional horror revenge tale, in which an abusive husband goes too far and gets a comeuppance, except that our narrator is so broken that we have no idea whether anything that happens is real or her damaged psyche trying to make sense of a terrible reality.

SHADOW MEN is a dark folk tale in which men, awed and envious of the power of women, take out their frustration in acts of petty violence, and justify it to themselves in convoluted ways. It sounds like real life except for the ancient Queen of the Forest, and the men who give up their shadows for power over women.

KUEBIKO starts like a situation from the real world but don’t be fooled. It’s a guided tour of a woman’s life: her history, her regrets, fears and ultimately her despair. If it sounds depressing, perhaps it is, but it’s also gorgeous. It too mirrors the cover art – an eviscerated woman can be a beautiful thing. But is the woman suffering purely for our voyeuristic entertainment?

Several of the stories make me slightly ashamed to be male, but when Ms. Bruce moves into the second person when talking about the husband in DOGS I felt accused, as if I am every bad man that has ever been. A relationship goes terribly wrong and it seems she only ever loved his dog.

In WAKE UP, PHIL, the Coke vs Pepsi war has grown to Orwellian proportions, but the products are indistinguishable, and confusing them has terrible consequences. This might be the only story in the collection that I felt I fully understood, but that probably means I’m missing something.

Two consecutive tales CROW VOODOO and THE QUEEN OF KNIVES travel the same road in different directions: both deal with young women claiming their heritage; both demonstrate the beauty inherent in violence and both stretch the reader in different ways. The former in particular abandons the idea that we should take some parts of a story literally and other parts as analogy – a thing can be both.

In THE ART OF FLYING, a woman who has survived cancer and an abusive husband finds solace in her own doom, and LITTLE HEART confirms the theme of the book: that memory, dreams, art and reality are all stirred together in the melting pot of our minds, and what we call truth is an amalgam of those experiences.

THE ART LOVERS surprised me by having a sympathetic male protagonist, though he is exploited by other men, but it becomes a sinister and increasingly violent meditation on how little the sexes understand each other. There is a genuinely sympathetic male character in WHITE RABBIT, about an elderly widower losing his way as dementia robs him of himself. This is paired with THE SEAS OF THE MOON, about a woman losing herself to post-natal depression. Life’s beginnings and endings will both destroy us.

I loved this book. The best way to read it is just to roll with it: a story may have more than one narrative strand and there’s no point trying to separate what is actually happening from the warped internal world of our damaged protagonists, or from Ms. Bruce’s unique way of mixing story with ideas and metaphor, giving each equal weight.

You could read it in little snippets, like a collection of beautiful but disturbing little poems, and it’s best to leave space between each tale, try to digest it. I know I didn’t understand everything, but I enjoyed mulling over each piece, my thoughts and emotions crawling in circles and looking for points of resonance in my own life, questioning my beliefs and assumptions, sometimes finding ways to blame myself for all the evils of the world. It takes a special book to do that.

You can open the book at random, read a paragraph or two and find a perfectly composed little epigram, capturing an idea or an emotion in a handful of words. Reading it too quickly or not giving it your full attention means you’ll miss some snippets of extraordinary beauty.

It’s not always an easy read – it takes effort and concentration, but the rewards for your commitment are worth it. A truly astonishing achievement.

[Aliki Ekaterini Chapple · Rating 4 out of 5]

These disturbing, distressing stories are hard to categorise. Are they horror, fantasy, science fiction? Yes. Visceral in the sense that they are plump and warm with living blood, tender and smooth as living organs - but slippery, organic, individual. There are dream states here, virtual worlds, half-buried memories, and it’s hard to tell which is which; the vivid, beautiful prose just carries you along with it. Whatever else this collection is, it is deeply feminist, not the rah-rah feminism of “girl power” but the raw pain of consciousness-raising, the shared distress that precedes the revolution. Strong stuff.

[Laura Mauro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This House of Wounds reads like dark magic; a collection of dreamlike tales which might also be spells, reading like incantations. Sublime descriptive language buoys you through dreamscapes, and often nightmarescapes; into the dark woods, along the ruined shores of a dead game-world, into the faded living room of a fading man. These are stories, but more importantly, they are experiences. "Cat World" shattered my heart. I read "Kuebiko" over and over and found something new every time. "White Rabbit" is a masterpiece. This book sings, and you should listen.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this collection of sixteen short stories to be a very mixed selection. Some of them I enjoyed a lot, others I found myself skipping through, and a couple I was unable to finish. This seems to be a question of me engaging with the style. Several pieces I found I was in the right mood for, and others I might have been on a different day. Exploring themes of fairytales, surrealism, and the weird, when they work they nail it, but oftentimes I found myself floating aside from the story, not quite able - or interested enough - to grasp what was going on. There are several themes, including dreeming (sic), which whilst intriguing in itself, didn't feature characters I could relate to. I wanted something that married the obscure to the relevant.

Taking the positives forward, I found the above qualities in my favourite stories in the collection: "Cat World", "Dogs", "Wake Up, Phil", "Little Heart", and "White Rabbit" (the latter being one of the reasons why I purchased this in the first place). The best story, though, is "Crow Voodoo", where all the dreamlike, odd, impossible world-building, and tenaciousness of the writing culminated in a great, offsetting story that really worked. Certainly the book is worth seeking out for those who don't need to be given explanations.

[Emma]

I don’t know what it is about wordy, lyric prose like this that really irritates me but I disliked a lot more in this than I liked. there’s ambiguity and then there’s writing that doesn’t even try to make sense of the text. annoying!

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a rhythm in the prose of these tragedy tales, grace and beauty with the darkly poetic, horrifically human tales treading darkly into other realms, nightmarish and dreamlike at times, gothic artistry in twisted minutes, snippets from a myriad of characters, a strange and haunting world of wounds and feelings before the reader with memorable characters from blood spilling queens to princesses, crows and shadows.
Nicely crafted originality within these stories, the reader left with great anticipation for a fully fleshed novel from the creation factory mind of Georgina Bruce.

Review also @ More2Read

[Kevin L · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a stellar collection of stories. I’ve rarely read short fiction that pushed me as hard as these stories. Many are as powerful and challenging as the best poetry, forcing you to take in rhythm, repetition, allegory and hard truths.

I can not recommend this collection highly enough. Absolutely brilliant work by Bruce. I’ll eagerly seek out any new work by her.

[Darrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several reoccurring themes emerge in this collection. Many stories reference Alice in Wonderland, as well as blood, doors, smashed mirrors, the beach, sisters, unreliable memories, madness, dreams, movies, men and women in conflict, doppelgangers, metamorphosis, people with dog masks, and out-of-body experiences. Also, several of the stories make references to the cover image. While the repeating images would normally feel repetitious to me, they don't here, taking on thematic tones. It's actually repetitious in a good way. The stories also make references to each other on several occasions, so many of them take place in the same world.

"The Lady of Situations", the first story in This House of Wounds and original to this collection, starts with "I smash my face into the mirror." It's a great opening line that grabs your interest and makes you want to read more. Like many stories in this collection, it's hallucinatory and dream-like, making you question reality. What's actually happening is a mystery. It's unsettling and disturbing in a compelling way. There are abrupt dream-like transitions like "The sky thickened and curdled to pitted white tiles, became a ceiling" which keeps the reader off balance in a good way.

There are numerous fantastic lines like "a white thread of lightning flashed through the cloud's arteries and veins" and "she couldn't douse water, or set fire aflame." The language is very poetic and filled with great imagery, which caused me to read slower than usual so I could savor each sentence. It switches from third person to first person to indicate when the narrator leaves or reenters her body. We're given hints that leaving the body could be due to a car crash, a rape, or death.

The stories often work by dream logic as when the narrator eats a book in order to read it, battles against her own body, or switches identities. Surprise twists come fast. Sometimes one sentence upends the one that came before. I loved the idea that we turn into music or some kind of vibration after we die. I wish I could write like this. It does what fiction is supposed to: it elevates the reader out of the mundane world.

The next story, "Red Queening", also original to this collection, makes references to Alice in Wonderland which makes me wonder if the smashed mirror is a reference to Through the Looking Glass. In this story, the characters of Aven and Neva (whose names are mirror images of each other) seem to have a similar relationship to Rachel and Diane in the previous story. This is another surreal story featuring a rabbit woman. Here's one line I particularly liked: "But even as she slipped through the door of herself she met herself coming back the other way."

"Her Bones the Trees" continues the themes of the previous two stories. "Movies weren't real, and neither were dreams. But even her memories were strangely vague, floating free of their context, like dresses hanging in the air, waiting to be plucked." Again, dream and reality blur. I particularly liked a dream Laura had in which she finds herself on stage in front of a large audience filled with dolls, but she can't remember her line. "Had her body ever been touched with love? No, never. Or with desire? No. Tenderness? Not even a glancing blow. They kissed her with broken glass. Caressed her with knives." I found this story to be particularly scary. I also continue to love the poetry of the language. "The proud antlers that crested around his head seemed to tangle and weave in and out with tree limbs and branches. As though he wore the whole forest for his crown."

In "Cat World", chewing gum transports a pair of orphaned sisters, 12-year-old Oh and 8-year-old Little One, to another world where they remain until the gum loses its flavor. Little One likes to pretend to be a baby. They need this in order to escape the harsh reality of their real life in which girls their age often end up at a brothel. This is a heart-rending tale. It's a different tone than the previous three stories.

In "The Book of Dreems", Kate has amnesia and Fraser, the man in her life who is old enough to be her father, is trying to convince her that she's crazy. He makes unreasonable demands such as ordering her not to have dreams. The story makes the claim that it's common for the brain not to remember traumatic events in order to protect you. This isn't actually true. Post-traumatic stress usually, if not always, works the opposite way, forcing someone to relive the traumatic event over and over again, unable to forget. The belief that trauma causes amnesia is more Hollywood than reality, but it still makes for an interesting story. The Travel Gum from the previous story is mentioned in this one.

"The Shadow Men" is another story featuring a woman with a missing sister. In this story, a man becomes detached from his shadow, and actually ends up becoming jealous of it. I liked this line: "And his shadow walked over the grass before him, and beside him, doubled like hands of a clock, long and thin and wavering like ghosts."

The next story "Kuebiko" repeatedly quotes from the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb", indicating this will be another story about altered reality. The sisters/doppelganger theme is revisited in the form of twin sisters Raewyn and Tanith and we get another uncaring male character in the form of Pete. In this story, bodies are houses and the womb is a door.

Given the heavy nature of the stories so far, it was nice that "Dogs" contained a bit of humor. (When a psychiatrist ticks a box on his notepad, the patient imagines it's the "smile at patient" box.) I liked a moment in which the narrator was wearing a dog mask and when she coughs, it sounds like barking.

"Wake Up, Phil" is reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984. Instead of a totalitarian government, a totalitarian company is in charge. Laura is required by her company to take weight-loss pills. Callitrix and Serberus are rival companies at war with each other and people can't go outside due to something called the Glare. It seems to take place in the future at first, but then it shifts into the past. As in the previous story, there's a therapist associated with a dog.

"Crow Voodoo" is a story about someone who is part crow and part human. "The Queen of Knives" stars a self-harming kindergartner who is obsessed with knives and we see another mirror get smashed. "The Art of Flying" includes a man with the head of a dog and out-of-body travel.

"Little Heart" mentions the desire to smash a mirror as well. The doppelganger in this story is the film version of the narrator's mother. The usual themes of blood, madness, out-of-body experiences, Alice in Wonderland, and dreams also reappear here. There's a particularly disturbing scene in which Anna sees her parents having sex while her mother is all bloody. Anna has trouble telling the difference between dreams, film, fantasy, and reality. One of my favorites.

The final three stories in the collection are my least favorite, but there's still a lot to like.  "The Art Lovers" is about a misogynist art student traveling through Europe. "The Seas of the Moon" deals with postpartum depression and compares pregnancy to hosting a parasite. I liked the image of "drowned mouths all open and full of sand." In "White Rabbit", Alec is morning the death of his wife of 58 years. It features Jefferson Airplane song lyrics, but they're repeated so often they're annoying. It's not my favorite, but it won the British Fantasy Award, so obviously tastes can vary.

This is one of the most amazing short story collections I've ever read. The previously unpublished stories towards the front of the book tended to be my favorites, although even the stories towards the end of the book which weren't my favorite are only inferior when compared the best stories in this collection. If, like me, you love surreal stories that operate based on dream logic, you'll definitely love this.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literary weirdness, bizarre dreams, dark places. The prose caresses the cuts and stabs the eye. One of the recurring themes was blood. I read horror and thrillers but this was just a bit too far "out there" for me. There were only a handful of tales that seemed to have a recognizable story. I guess this says something about me but most were indecipherable. The stories aren't bad, they just aren't my cup of tea. The writing style is actually beautiful. This is my first encounter with the writing of Georgina Bruce, and it will be the last.

[Gareth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an imaginative horror debut collection by Georgina Bruce. Time and again the writing reached out and placed a cascade of glorious images in the space behind my eyes that merged with the narrative, in a way very few books have.

There is wonderful alternate world settings for each tale, I was very much taken by the stories Cat World a future of utter patriarchal control, girls and women are made to lose their humanity to survive, and The Book of Dreems which played with the idea of what makes us real the body? Memories?

This is a brilliant collection that will take the reader to incredible places and spark the imagination.

[Chris Riley · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good writer who lacks the basic fundamentals of good story telling--in this collection, at least. Not one story in this collection captured, let alone held my attention. Not one. I would be hard pressed to explain what any of them were truly about. The story plots (basic fundamentals of story telling) were either too vague, or non-existent. Ninety-percent felt like a stream of consciousness. Like listening to a song without the beat. Just my opinion, though. Others might feel differently. Beautiful cover.

[Sam Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never quite felt comfortable with the term "speculative" fiction, being that I myself write horror and consider myself foremost a "horror" writer. "Speculative," to me, is a sort of catch-all, and while I certainly don't dislike the term, it is more difficult to understand (for me, albeit I might be dense) than "sci-fi" or "fantasy." But if ever a book was deserving of the label "speculative," it is "House of Wounds."

In this collection, Georgina Bruce takes advantage of language, of metaphor and the ability to disorient the reader through the horrors and sicknesses of abuse. The book largely focuses on the violence done to women, but is a far cry from exploitive. Indeed, the book is a bleeding critique of how women and their bodies have been handled not just within horror and science fiction, but in society at large. The result is a series of emotionally rough, devastating rides, with prose that repeatedly hammers down.

My one recommendation is that you not binge this book, as I did on a long flight. I would recommend you take it one story at a day, so that the effect of the stories is fresh.

[Meliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

i found this weirdly prophetic, many of these stories reminded me of movies or news stories about women that came out THIS year while this book is over 5 years old. you’d be surprised how many of these stories seem to be responses to the “man or bear” discourse and yet it can’t be because this book is from 2019. most of these stories have the theme of memory and how your memories shape your view of reality while also adding a dystopian twist. a LOT of these stories have the theme of the very drugs meant to help you being used against you to manipulate and control you which is a VERY hot topic right now due to movies like Blink Twice. i really loved a lot of these stories with my very favorites being Red Queening, Cat World, Kuebiko, and Her Bones The Trees. I liked the concepts of Crow Voodoo, The Queen of Knives, and Little Heart but i felt that towards the end of the collections a lot of the stories started to blur into this vague dark fantasy space rather than having a distinct voice and vibe. some of these stories definitely felt like they could’ve and should’ve been fused together to make a more complete story rather than two okayish stories

[Haralambi Markov · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections I've read in a long time. Almost no short story is a dud and the quality of Bruce as a storyteller to completely disorient the reader as to what’s real and what’s not. The collection takes the heart and soul of the gothic and superimposes it on the dystopian. The writing is very cerebral and the use of the unreliable narrator is not just put in use to subvert the reader’s expectations, but to recreate the disorientation of the fractured psyche and underscore just how fragile human perception really is. Really shaken up by the unsettling beauty of Bruce’s writing.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite horrific, but eventually stoical, eventually beautiful…. A wonderful story, brilliantly adumbrated, with no strident links, but a myriad subtle ones like that almost inaudible music. I’m so glad I caught it.
That sort of says it all as a review of the book’s gestalt

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written collection of powerful short stories. I loved that the stories intertwined with one another in theme, and I was reminded of works by Shirley Jackson at times.

[Deborah Goulding · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Wheeler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stories are incredibly scattershot and overall the collection is disappointing. A few good ones but on the whole not worth picking up.