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Life Among the Terranauts
From the author of the “enthralling” ( New York Times Book Review ) and “beautiful” ( Washington Post ) debut novel The Vexations comes an exciting new story collection that is “perfect for fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell” ( Booklist ), moving boldly between the real and the surreal
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Following her “marvelous” ( Wall Street Journal ) first novel, Caitlin Horrocks returns with a much-anticipated collection of short stories. In her signature, genre-defying style, she explodes our notions of what a story can do and where it can take us.
Life Among the Terranauts demonstrates all the inventiveness that won admirers for Horrocks’s first collection. In “The Sleep,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories , residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in “Sun City,” published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.
As the Boston Globe noted of her first collection, Horrocks is a master of “wild yet delicately handled satire,” a “sprightly heartbreak” in which she is able to “mingle a note of tenderness in the desolation.” With its startling range—from Norwegian trolls to Peruvian tour guides— Life Among the Terranauts once again dazzles readers, cementing Horrocks’s reputation as one of the premier young writers of our time.
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Following her “marvelous” ( Wall Street Journal ) first novel, Caitlin Horrocks returns with a much-anticipated collection of short stories. In her signature, genre-defying style, she explodes our notions of what a story can do and where it can take us.
Life Among the Terranauts demonstrates all the inventiveness that won admirers for Horrocks’s first collection. In “The Sleep,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories , residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in “Sun City,” published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.
As the Boston Globe noted of her first collection, Horrocks is a master of “wild yet delicately handled satire,” a “sprightly heartbreak” in which she is able to “mingle a note of tenderness in the desolation.” With its startling range—from Norwegian trolls to Peruvian tour guides— Life Among the Terranauts once again dazzles readers, cementing Horrocks’s reputation as one of the premier young writers of our time.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published January 12, 2021
50 people are currently reading
2633 people want to read
About the author
Caitlin Horrocks
13 books138 followersCaitlin Horrocks is author of the novel The Vexations, named one of the top ten books of 2019 by the Wall Street Journal. Her story collection Life Among the Terranauts is coming out January 2021 from Little, Brown. Her debut story collection This Is Not Your City was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her stories and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Tin House, One Story, and other journals and anthologies. She is an Editor-at-Large for the Kenyon Review and teaches at Grand Valley State University, and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
January 26, 2021
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.
In this fourteen short story collection, Caitlin Horrocks explores a variety of themes including relationships, future sustainability of civilizations, and human desires. In full honesty, I didn't feel any of the stories were memorable enough for me to review them each on their own.
Publication Date 12/01/21
Goodreads review 26/01/21
In this fourteen short story collection, Caitlin Horrocks explores a variety of themes including relationships, future sustainability of civilizations, and human desires. In full honesty, I didn't feel any of the stories were memorable enough for me to review them each on their own.
Publication Date 12/01/21
Goodreads review 26/01/21
March 18, 2021
A great collection of short stories. If I could take out five of them, it would be a 4,5/5 book.
Looking forward to her next collection!
Looking forward to her next collection!
July 6, 2021
I think I may have liked Horrocks' This Is Not Your City a little bit better, but really enjoyed this book of stories as well. Very fine writing, great characters, and wonderful, imaginative stories. My favorites in this volume included "And Looked Down One As Far As I Could," "23 Months," "Teacher," "Paradise Lodge," and the title story "Life Among the Terranauts." If you like short stories and are casting about for something to read this summer, I can definitely recommend either of these collections.
January 16, 2021
3.5 - Some of these stories were absolute standouts, while some didn't quite hit the mark for me. "Sun City," "Life Among the Terranauts," and "The Sleep" were some of my favorites, and even with the stories I didn't love, Horrocks' writing pulls you in each and every time, which made it easy for me to get immersed in each story. Reading this also made me want to check out The Vexations, her novel that came out last year. Definitely recommend checking this out!
December 1, 2020
The stories in Life Among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks are filled with people puzzling over their lives and a world that holds more questions than answers; they don't even know what questions to ask; they try to master the words themselves. They hold onto the past; they try to escape; they risk going into the unknown; they make a new start.
I lived in the aura of the first story, The Sleep, for days.
"Bounty was an assertion, an act of faith. It looked best when left unexamined." ~from Life Among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks
"Our children came home and told us that we were the suckers of the last century," living in a town with no future and no prospects. Immigrants had come for the free land, and stayed out of pure persistence.
One winter the Rasmussen family decide to hibernate until spring. Soon other families also hibernate, saving money on food and heat, children happy not to stand in freezing weather for a school bus. The town becomes a media sensation. How to explain why they stayed, why they slept?
The story was unsettling, and yet, somehow comforting. The quotation from James Joyce's The Dead stayed in my head as I thought of a world sleeping under an eternal, gentle snowfall.
In Norwegian for Troll, Annika returns to the remote Keweenaw Peninsula to aid her elderly mother and stays on after her death, stuck in her family's past, until she remembers her immigrant ancestors had risked a journey into the future.
While Rose sorts her mother's estate she wonders about her mother's enigmatic relationship with her roommate, Bev.
A teacher realizes she can't save every disturbed child who comes through her classroom.
A woman at a party decides to sleep with a man because he is going to jail.
Teenage girls looking for guaranteed happiness turn to Magic- 8 Balls and Ouija boards.
A divorced father helps his estranged son, wishing he had advice for living in an uncertain world.
An elderly woman knows she is in her last days. She pities the priest. "How endless, the secrets of other. How endless, the reassurance they need,"she thinks.
A woman loses everything on the Oregon Trail, except her own life.
A traveler abroad seeks answers to questions, dreaming of a new life before he is forced to return home.
The tour guide at Paradise Lodge promises to show the 'real Peru,' but all he has are stories to fill the hungry tourists. When he gives them the real thing, he discovers their inability to comprehend what they are seeing.
A woman realizes that her childhood memories are unreliable.
The last story, Life Among the Terranauts, is also about a retreat from the world, but is filled with sinister overtones. A group of volunteers are paid to live in a biodome. They had been chosen for their "fortitude, for pigheaded faith," but 542 days in, with 188 to go, food is scarce and things are falling apart. One man has embraced this life, proclaiming they are a new society, a new start for humanity, calling himself Adam and the narrator Eve. It is chilling.
Fortitude and faith. It's what we all need in this life.
The writing is fantastic, with sentences that stuck in my head.
Seed hulls scatter dark across the sinking snow, punctuation marks without words.
Growing up had been so far a great un-knowing, an erosion of the facts that had once seemed very clear and precious to her.
The silences that exist inside all stories.
There is no blade that mends, they sing. Only the thread going forward. Only our readiness for the cut.
I previously read Horrock's novel The Vexations.
I received an ARC in exchange for a fair and unbiased review
I lived in the aura of the first story, The Sleep, for days.
"Bounty was an assertion, an act of faith. It looked best when left unexamined." ~from Life Among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks
"Our children came home and told us that we were the suckers of the last century," living in a town with no future and no prospects. Immigrants had come for the free land, and stayed out of pure persistence.
One winter the Rasmussen family decide to hibernate until spring. Soon other families also hibernate, saving money on food and heat, children happy not to stand in freezing weather for a school bus. The town becomes a media sensation. How to explain why they stayed, why they slept?
The story was unsettling, and yet, somehow comforting. The quotation from James Joyce's The Dead stayed in my head as I thought of a world sleeping under an eternal, gentle snowfall.
In Norwegian for Troll, Annika returns to the remote Keweenaw Peninsula to aid her elderly mother and stays on after her death, stuck in her family's past, until she remembers her immigrant ancestors had risked a journey into the future.
While Rose sorts her mother's estate she wonders about her mother's enigmatic relationship with her roommate, Bev.
A teacher realizes she can't save every disturbed child who comes through her classroom.
A woman at a party decides to sleep with a man because he is going to jail.
Teenage girls looking for guaranteed happiness turn to Magic- 8 Balls and Ouija boards.
A divorced father helps his estranged son, wishing he had advice for living in an uncertain world.
An elderly woman knows she is in her last days. She pities the priest. "How endless, the secrets of other. How endless, the reassurance they need,"she thinks.
A woman loses everything on the Oregon Trail, except her own life.
A traveler abroad seeks answers to questions, dreaming of a new life before he is forced to return home.
The tour guide at Paradise Lodge promises to show the 'real Peru,' but all he has are stories to fill the hungry tourists. When he gives them the real thing, he discovers their inability to comprehend what they are seeing.
A woman realizes that her childhood memories are unreliable.
The last story, Life Among the Terranauts, is also about a retreat from the world, but is filled with sinister overtones. A group of volunteers are paid to live in a biodome. They had been chosen for their "fortitude, for pigheaded faith," but 542 days in, with 188 to go, food is scarce and things are falling apart. One man has embraced this life, proclaiming they are a new society, a new start for humanity, calling himself Adam and the narrator Eve. It is chilling.
Fortitude and faith. It's what we all need in this life.
The writing is fantastic, with sentences that stuck in my head.
Seed hulls scatter dark across the sinking snow, punctuation marks without words.
Growing up had been so far a great un-knowing, an erosion of the facts that had once seemed very clear and precious to her.
The silences that exist inside all stories.
There is no blade that mends, they sing. Only the thread going forward. Only our readiness for the cut.
I previously read Horrock's novel The Vexations.
I received an ARC in exchange for a fair and unbiased review
February 18, 2021
Not a skip to be found!!!!! 14 stories, all cool as hell, all genuinely surprising, every time I finished one I couldn't wait to start another. The shorter stories are super punchy, the longer ones complete journeys, with details revealed exactly when they need to be and not a word sooner. I loved this a whole lot. You could not pay me to pick a favorite!
May 28, 2021
Great stories, many of them dark. The title story made my skin crawl.
March 12, 2023
This is such a great collection of short stories! Each one was captivating and they were varied enough keep the reader's attention through the book. "Norwegian for Troll" was my favorite of the collection.
November 16, 2020
Caitlin Horrocks is one of my favorite writers. I've been following her since she published her stellar short story collection "This is Not Your City" in 2011. "Life Among the Terranauts" is her second short story collection following the publication of her novel, "The Vexations" last year.
Horrocks' range is astonishing. Stories in this collection ricochet from characters who travel to Prague in midlife crisis to dystopian stories about families succumbing to various ailments on a modern-day Oregon Trail to an eco-tourism guide in Costa Rica who is struggling with life/work balances and resentment towards his wealthy, careless charges to a moving story about a father meeting up with his son after more than a decade.
What I love most about Horrocks' work is the way that in each story she drills down to the essence of her characters' dilemmas. When the eco-tourism guide, Victor, is angry with his clients, his supervisor says: "Being angry at the wealth of strangers was like being angry at the train. It came whether you liked it or not, and it made things grow." When George is having a midlife crisis in Prague, his wife writes: "Come home and we'll talk. I'm sorry for a lot of things. But I'm not financing your midlife crisis." In "Norwegian for Troll" the main character, Annika, realizes that for years she'd thought her grandmother wanted her to stay in the UP, but the arrival of her Norwegian cousins makes her realize her grandmother's message might have been the opposite: "However much you love this place, it isn't your problem. Unwind the rope from your waist, slide down the cliff face, trust that something better will catch you."
Inventive, insightful, captivating stories. Not to be missed.
Horrocks' range is astonishing. Stories in this collection ricochet from characters who travel to Prague in midlife crisis to dystopian stories about families succumbing to various ailments on a modern-day Oregon Trail to an eco-tourism guide in Costa Rica who is struggling with life/work balances and resentment towards his wealthy, careless charges to a moving story about a father meeting up with his son after more than a decade.
What I love most about Horrocks' work is the way that in each story she drills down to the essence of her characters' dilemmas. When the eco-tourism guide, Victor, is angry with his clients, his supervisor says: "Being angry at the wealth of strangers was like being angry at the train. It came whether you liked it or not, and it made things grow." When George is having a midlife crisis in Prague, his wife writes: "Come home and we'll talk. I'm sorry for a lot of things. But I'm not financing your midlife crisis." In "Norwegian for Troll" the main character, Annika, realizes that for years she'd thought her grandmother wanted her to stay in the UP, but the arrival of her Norwegian cousins makes her realize her grandmother's message might have been the opposite: "However much you love this place, it isn't your problem. Unwind the rope from your waist, slide down the cliff face, trust that something better will catch you."
Inventive, insightful, captivating stories. Not to be missed.
January 30, 2021
Dazzling.
May 26, 2025
Really fun short story collection, which makes it kind of tough to rate as a whole. Instead, I’m just going to rank every story.
14. And Looked Down As Far As I Could - Kind of a detached, outside looking in type of narration on this one. Pretty short and just didn’t really click with me the way the others did.
13. Murder Games - Didn’t really see the connection between the past and present parts of the story. Kinda cool to see a girl’s active imagination contrasted with a more dull present outlook, but it didn’t really stick with me. It was fine overall but not something I’m thinking I’ll reread.
12. All Over With Fire - I was not clicking with this one at all until the last few pages when I finally understood why this guy had had his breakdown and why he came to Prague. Liked the ending part, but just an inconsistent experience overall. This one might benefit from a reread.
11. Sun City - Didn’t really click with this one personally. I didn’t get a strong connection between the granddaughter and the grandmother’s roommate. Just felt like I was waiting for more to happen by the end.
10. The Untranslatables - Not much happening plot-wise, but it was a fun concept about a guy obsessing over the meaning of language. Short and sweet.
9. Chance Me - Nice little story about a guy trying to reconnect with his son after he abandoned him 18 years ago. The present plot line was good, but I wasn’t super engaged in the dad’s past life in the cult (which sounds like it would be WAY more interesting than him helping his kid with college visits).
8. 23 Months - This one started out way more interesting than how it ended, but that is kind of the point of the story. Didn’t click with the protagonist in this one.
7. Norwegian for Troll - A nice little story about roots and what connects you to a place. The Norwegian cousins are a great duo for the main character to interact with. The Northern Michigan vibes are also top tier. Overall this was a great story to pair with The Sleep.
6. Paradise Lodge - I was surprised how well this story juggled the three plot lines, but it mixed them all very well together. I liked the tour guide character the most, and he was the clear winner to root for. Didn’t like the sex scene between the mother and the tour guide, thought that came out of nowhere, but it’s a small nitpick for this one.
5. On the Oregon Trail - Really fun story. Don’t want to spoil too much, but this one was right up my alley once I picked up the reference after about a page in.
4. Life Among the Terranauts - Cool story overall, don’t want to spoil too much. I like how the business executive’s theory about eco-stablization (Gaia Theory) ends up being right, but it unfolded differently than how I thought.
3. Better Not Tell You Now - Great story that really picks up once you realize the trend the narrator describes. Ending is also perfect.
2. The Sleep - This was the only story I’d read before reading this collection. A really profound commentary on what keeps you rooted to a place even when things have gone to shit. The lives of the townspeople are so bad the best solution is just to sleep for about 4 months out of the year. The collective narrator of the town is also a perfect fit for this story
1. Teacher - When the first line is “Nine years after he was a student in my fourth-grade class, Zach Nowak threw a brick off an I-75 overpass,” you know it’s gonna be good. A little context heavy in the first page or so about the narrator and her friend, but it’s all worth to see the twisted piece of shit that Zach is, as well as the narrator’s realization about “you can’t save everyone”.
14. And Looked Down As Far As I Could - Kind of a detached, outside looking in type of narration on this one. Pretty short and just didn’t really click with me the way the others did.
13. Murder Games - Didn’t really see the connection between the past and present parts of the story. Kinda cool to see a girl’s active imagination contrasted with a more dull present outlook, but it didn’t really stick with me. It was fine overall but not something I’m thinking I’ll reread.
12. All Over With Fire - I was not clicking with this one at all until the last few pages when I finally understood why this guy had had his breakdown and why he came to Prague. Liked the ending part, but just an inconsistent experience overall. This one might benefit from a reread.
11. Sun City - Didn’t really click with this one personally. I didn’t get a strong connection between the granddaughter and the grandmother’s roommate. Just felt like I was waiting for more to happen by the end.
10. The Untranslatables - Not much happening plot-wise, but it was a fun concept about a guy obsessing over the meaning of language. Short and sweet.
9. Chance Me - Nice little story about a guy trying to reconnect with his son after he abandoned him 18 years ago. The present plot line was good, but I wasn’t super engaged in the dad’s past life in the cult (which sounds like it would be WAY more interesting than him helping his kid with college visits).
8. 23 Months - This one started out way more interesting than how it ended, but that is kind of the point of the story. Didn’t click with the protagonist in this one.
7. Norwegian for Troll - A nice little story about roots and what connects you to a place. The Norwegian cousins are a great duo for the main character to interact with. The Northern Michigan vibes are also top tier. Overall this was a great story to pair with The Sleep.
6. Paradise Lodge - I was surprised how well this story juggled the three plot lines, but it mixed them all very well together. I liked the tour guide character the most, and he was the clear winner to root for. Didn’t like the sex scene between the mother and the tour guide, thought that came out of nowhere, but it’s a small nitpick for this one.
5. On the Oregon Trail - Really fun story. Don’t want to spoil too much, but this one was right up my alley once I picked up the reference after about a page in.
4. Life Among the Terranauts - Cool story overall, don’t want to spoil too much. I like how the business executive’s theory about eco-stablization (Gaia Theory) ends up being right, but it unfolded differently than how I thought.
3. Better Not Tell You Now - Great story that really picks up once you realize the trend the narrator describes. Ending is also perfect.
2. The Sleep - This was the only story I’d read before reading this collection. A really profound commentary on what keeps you rooted to a place even when things have gone to shit. The lives of the townspeople are so bad the best solution is just to sleep for about 4 months out of the year. The collective narrator of the town is also a perfect fit for this story
1. Teacher - When the first line is “Nine years after he was a student in my fourth-grade class, Zach Nowak threw a brick off an I-75 overpass,” you know it’s gonna be good. A little context heavy in the first page or so about the narrator and her friend, but it’s all worth to see the twisted piece of shit that Zach is, as well as the narrator’s realization about “you can’t save everyone”.
February 16, 2024
Through these stories Horrocks explores the disappointment inherent in life. She writes about all its presentation, the disappointment in growing up, in falling in love, in falling out of love, in dying, in trying to pursue a goal. Yet her stories are not wholly pessimistic but oddly and quietly accepting of reality. She frames each disappointment as part of life. She presents them as the things people don’t tell you about and seeks to lessen the impact of finding them out for yourself by sharing the experiences of others encountering the same. A strange but oddly compelling collection.
June 28, 2021
litfic is always so hit or miss for me. I liked the first story and the last story but very few in the middle.
June 11, 2021
I read Life Among the Terranauts in a remote rural area that was similar to some of the regions described in Caitlin Horrock's book and it made me feel wobbly (in a good way)...the familiarity but the deep strangeness too. For example, in one story, the inhabitants of a small town which is getting smaller decide, one after another, to hibernate through the bitter winter. Hibernate like bears do, not like...I don't know, your grandmother does when she doesn't like the weather. Every story is crisp and taut and strange and delicious. I paced myself because I didn't want the book to end. I marked many passages and sentences that moved me or that made me stop and say, "Aw man, I am NEVER going to be able to write as beautifully, as perfectly, as oddly as this and I don't care at all!"
February 15, 2021
I love listening to the blues. The music and the beat come together to lift you up even when you are down. I don’t think that just reading the lyrics would work - you need the music to sooth the pain. For me, Life Among The Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks is like reading the blues - all pain and no gain.
This is not to say that Horrocks isn’t a gifted writer, that her stories are not well thought out, or that her characters are not worthy of our empathy. To the contrary, she has written stories about seeming ordinary people that will tear your heart out.
Here are the subjects of a few of Horrock’s fourteen stories; people in a desolate town that decide to hibernate each winter, a single woman who has previously unmet relatives from Norway come to visit, two women packaging up the trinkets collected by a now dead relative, a teacher with an impossible student, two lost souls meeting at a party, a man who collects untranslatable words, and, the title story, an unmatched group of people spending two years in an Terra 2 survival test. Just your ordinary citizens facing the trials of everyday life.
Most of these stories made me ache for the characters. They were, for the most part, stories of lonely people who are not so much pathetic as trapped by their lives. They are all taking small steps to move forward but you are left thinking they are not going to make much progress. You see their pain and problems but as a reader you can do nothing to help them.
As I said, listening to the blues makes me feel better. Reading them not so much. Horrocks has created a very well written book that is full of interesting situations and believable characters. I have to give her credit for being a great writer but the book did not resonate with me. Perhaps it will with you.
This is not to say that Horrocks isn’t a gifted writer, that her stories are not well thought out, or that her characters are not worthy of our empathy. To the contrary, she has written stories about seeming ordinary people that will tear your heart out.
Here are the subjects of a few of Horrock’s fourteen stories; people in a desolate town that decide to hibernate each winter, a single woman who has previously unmet relatives from Norway come to visit, two women packaging up the trinkets collected by a now dead relative, a teacher with an impossible student, two lost souls meeting at a party, a man who collects untranslatable words, and, the title story, an unmatched group of people spending two years in an Terra 2 survival test. Just your ordinary citizens facing the trials of everyday life.
Most of these stories made me ache for the characters. They were, for the most part, stories of lonely people who are not so much pathetic as trapped by their lives. They are all taking small steps to move forward but you are left thinking they are not going to make much progress. You see their pain and problems but as a reader you can do nothing to help them.
As I said, listening to the blues makes me feel better. Reading them not so much. Horrocks has created a very well written book that is full of interesting situations and believable characters. I have to give her credit for being a great writer but the book did not resonate with me. Perhaps it will with you.
April 14, 2021
I believe that I am finding out that I am not a fan of short story collection books. I only finished this book because I had it in audio format and could 2 times speed the narration. I would not recommend this collection but I did somewhat enjoy the final story, Life Among the Terranauts, the name of this book. I found that so many of the other short stories revolved around cheating and risque sexual acts. I don't enjoy plots that revolve around the characters' sexuality so this was a big miss for me. Some of the stories I didn't even finish the last few pages, such as the mid-life crisis cheating husband or the fetishized soon to be placed in jail murderer. I gave this collection 2 stars because the author does a brilliant job at writing and shows lots of potential for enjoyment, if I liked the content.
July 2, 2022
Horrocks writes well, and a few of the stories were quite good, but nothing stood out as oh-wow-this-is-fantastic. She can create believable worlds and situations, but the endings sometimes peter out or wrap up with something gnomic that the story did not earn, in my opinion. You have to be more willing than I am to suspend disbelief. This is especially true of the last story, the one for which the collection is named. Dastardly as insane rich capitalists can be, it simply isn't credible that the owner and his team of lawyers would refuse to let out people whose health was visibly worsening and who were begging to leave.
I may try another collection, but Horrocks hasn't joined the ranks of my must-read authors.
I may try another collection, but Horrocks hasn't joined the ranks of my must-read authors.
January 29, 2021
I really enjoyed this collection. There is a little something for everyone here, and I personally think Horrocks does speculative fiction best. I truly enjoyed every story, which is a rarity for me when it comes to collections like these, and my favorites were "Norwegian for Troll," "Better Not Tell you Now," and "Paradise Lodge." Everyone raves about "The Sleep," which is excellent, but each story is unique and feels oddly connected, and I felt like I was transported to different worlds I have yet to experience or might never be able to experience. I can see myself rereading this one down the line.
August 30, 2021
Here's a summary of the stories:
The Sleep: Residents of a failing town named Bounty decide to hibernate the long winters away in an effort to avoid having to leave due to the town's financial crisis. First printed in the Atlantic.
Norwegian for Troll: Annika's distant relatives from Norway visit her on her family's broken-down home, bringing a vague folkloric feeling (but no actual magic) to the story of how Annika makes the difficult decision to leave. First appeared in Glimmer Train (now defunct.)
Sun City: Rose helps her grandmother's friend, Bev, clear out her grandmother's things after her grandmother's death. Bev might have been more than roommates with the grandmother. Rose is an out lesbian and a bartender. The grandmother was a person who suffered from alcohol use disorder. When Rose sees how deep Bev's grief goes, she ends up mixing drinks with all her skill for Bev and Rose to drink. First published in The New Yorker.
Teacher: First person narrator reminisces with her friend about a violent tragedy involving one of her former students, Zach Nowak, who threw a brick over a bridge, hitting a mini-van and killing the family inside. Teacher wonders if she could have reached this troubled kid, then remembers a night when he threatened her. First published in Arkansas International.
23 Months: First person narrator meets a guy at a party who accidentally killed his girlfriend when he was driving drunk. They have sex. Narrator reveals that she's there at that town to start over after her boyfriend has assaulted her, but says "she deserved it," (ugh!). First published in Epoch.
Better Not Tell You Now: First person plural narration (we) tells the tale of how several young people end up fulfilling the magical prophecies of a group of teenaged girlfriends who use magic 8 Balls and a Ouija Board. Clever and light. First published in Crazyhorse.
Chance Me: Divorced father, Harry, takes his estranged son, Just (for Justice) on college visits, wondering if his underqualified, granola child son is doing visiting them. Turns out, he is going to make a kind of "expose" of the schools. Flashbacks to Harry and this girlfriend, Willow (Just's mother), and their idealistic stay at an experimental residence called Arcosanti.
And Looked Down One as Far as I Could: Gloria lives alone birdwatching and waiting to die. She's very old. Townspeople visit and give her food. The priest visits. She remembers her husband, who used to call her chickadee, but it wasn't a compliment. She's glad he's dead. This one's really more of a character study. First published in Hayden's Ferry Review.
Murder Games: Ella is a young girl whose collection of stuffed animals are her only friends. Her father is a soldier off fighting. She talks to them and they communicate to her. Blanket is her blanket, and one day her mother decides it has to be hemmed. It is falling to shreds. Ella has a fit about this. She wakes up seeing her mother attempting to pick the threads out of her ancient blanket. Ella grows up, thinks this may have only been a faulty memory. at last giving up her stuffed animals. The ending meditates on growing up. First published in Joyland.
On the Oregon Trail: First person narrator, a wife and mother, loses all her possessions and is the only one left alive after traveling on the Oregon trail. First published in Hobart.
All Over With Fire: A man escapes his responsibilities and stays in Prague with a girlfriend until his money runs out and he flies home on a plane ticket purchased by his wife. First published in Colorado Review as "Jan Palach in Prague."
The Untranslatables: Unnamed third person male protagonist collects words from around the globe, writing them on pieces of paper. He obsesses over them. He thinks a woman who worked at a temp agency is his soulmate because "mamihapinatapei" (from Yaghan, an indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego which means a wordless glance, lingering and meaningful) passes between them. He attempts and fails to find her, turning to his word collection for comfort, eventually losing his job and house because of the collection. (House falls under the weight). A strange one. Published in Unstuck.
Paradise Lodge: A worker, Victor, employed as a tour guide for a run-down nature preserve in the Tropics, sleeps with one of the visitors, then runs away from the job and his pregnant girlfriend. First published in American Short Fiction.
Life Among the Terranauts: A group of people agree to live in an experimental environment for two years in exchange for a large payment from the wealthy man who paid for the environment. The story begins as the environment is failing and food is scarce. Igor, a zealot, ends up the only one left alive along with our first person female narrator, whom he looks on as his "eve." First published in One Story.
Obviously, my summaries are a little reductive. There's much more nuance to many of these stories that draws a reader in. I had trouble finishing Paradise Lodge, a long one, because I didn't think the characters rose above a kind of rich/poor perspective--also, adultery. All Over With Fire likewise failed to draw me in. I'm not very interested in stories of adultery because I always think, "Why not make things simple and just leave?" and so the plot tension fizzles. Oregon Trail seemed a little too much tongue-in-cheek. I wasn't sure if it was satire or just... something else? Anyways, I didn't get it. The one about the old woman didn't seem to go anywhere. Waiting to die doesn't make a good story in my opinion. So, an uneven collection as far as the appeal goes, but I could sense the mastery of the craft behind them.
The Sleep: Residents of a failing town named Bounty decide to hibernate the long winters away in an effort to avoid having to leave due to the town's financial crisis. First printed in the Atlantic.
Norwegian for Troll: Annika's distant relatives from Norway visit her on her family's broken-down home, bringing a vague folkloric feeling (but no actual magic) to the story of how Annika makes the difficult decision to leave. First appeared in Glimmer Train (now defunct.)
Sun City: Rose helps her grandmother's friend, Bev, clear out her grandmother's things after her grandmother's death. Bev might have been more than roommates with the grandmother. Rose is an out lesbian and a bartender. The grandmother was a person who suffered from alcohol use disorder. When Rose sees how deep Bev's grief goes, she ends up mixing drinks with all her skill for Bev and Rose to drink. First published in The New Yorker.
Teacher: First person narrator reminisces with her friend about a violent tragedy involving one of her former students, Zach Nowak, who threw a brick over a bridge, hitting a mini-van and killing the family inside. Teacher wonders if she could have reached this troubled kid, then remembers a night when he threatened her. First published in Arkansas International.
23 Months: First person narrator meets a guy at a party who accidentally killed his girlfriend when he was driving drunk. They have sex. Narrator reveals that she's there at that town to start over after her boyfriend has assaulted her, but says "she deserved it," (ugh!). First published in Epoch.
Better Not Tell You Now: First person plural narration (we) tells the tale of how several young people end up fulfilling the magical prophecies of a group of teenaged girlfriends who use magic 8 Balls and a Ouija Board. Clever and light. First published in Crazyhorse.
Chance Me: Divorced father, Harry, takes his estranged son, Just (for Justice) on college visits, wondering if his underqualified, granola child son is doing visiting them. Turns out, he is going to make a kind of "expose" of the schools. Flashbacks to Harry and this girlfriend, Willow (Just's mother), and their idealistic stay at an experimental residence called Arcosanti.
And Looked Down One as Far as I Could: Gloria lives alone birdwatching and waiting to die. She's very old. Townspeople visit and give her food. The priest visits. She remembers her husband, who used to call her chickadee, but it wasn't a compliment. She's glad he's dead. This one's really more of a character study. First published in Hayden's Ferry Review.
Murder Games: Ella is a young girl whose collection of stuffed animals are her only friends. Her father is a soldier off fighting. She talks to them and they communicate to her. Blanket is her blanket, and one day her mother decides it has to be hemmed. It is falling to shreds. Ella has a fit about this. She wakes up seeing her mother attempting to pick the threads out of her ancient blanket. Ella grows up, thinks this may have only been a faulty memory. at last giving up her stuffed animals. The ending meditates on growing up. First published in Joyland.
On the Oregon Trail: First person narrator, a wife and mother, loses all her possessions and is the only one left alive after traveling on the Oregon trail. First published in Hobart.
All Over With Fire: A man escapes his responsibilities and stays in Prague with a girlfriend until his money runs out and he flies home on a plane ticket purchased by his wife. First published in Colorado Review as "Jan Palach in Prague."
The Untranslatables: Unnamed third person male protagonist collects words from around the globe, writing them on pieces of paper. He obsesses over them. He thinks a woman who worked at a temp agency is his soulmate because "mamihapinatapei" (from Yaghan, an indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego which means a wordless glance, lingering and meaningful) passes between them. He attempts and fails to find her, turning to his word collection for comfort, eventually losing his job and house because of the collection. (House falls under the weight). A strange one. Published in Unstuck.
Paradise Lodge: A worker, Victor, employed as a tour guide for a run-down nature preserve in the Tropics, sleeps with one of the visitors, then runs away from the job and his pregnant girlfriend. First published in American Short Fiction.
Life Among the Terranauts: A group of people agree to live in an experimental environment for two years in exchange for a large payment from the wealthy man who paid for the environment. The story begins as the environment is failing and food is scarce. Igor, a zealot, ends up the only one left alive along with our first person female narrator, whom he looks on as his "eve." First published in One Story.
Obviously, my summaries are a little reductive. There's much more nuance to many of these stories that draws a reader in. I had trouble finishing Paradise Lodge, a long one, because I didn't think the characters rose above a kind of rich/poor perspective--also, adultery. All Over With Fire likewise failed to draw me in. I'm not very interested in stories of adultery because I always think, "Why not make things simple and just leave?" and so the plot tension fizzles. Oregon Trail seemed a little too much tongue-in-cheek. I wasn't sure if it was satire or just... something else? Anyways, I didn't get it. The one about the old woman didn't seem to go anywhere. Waiting to die doesn't make a good story in my opinion. So, an uneven collection as far as the appeal goes, but I could sense the mastery of the craft behind them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 3, 2023
3.5 rounded up. My book club and I picked up this collection thinking it was heartwarming and easy to enjoy - we were off base. Because we couldn’t get through this collection after two or three sittings, I finally returned (after a year of this book taunting me on the shelf). I’m reminded of the aspects I enjoyed, as well as the darker parts I could’ve done without.
Horrocks writes about the depths of family ties, grief, growing up, morality, and the exhaustive pressures of existence. Similar to The Worst Person in the World (2021), Life Among the Terranauts forces the reader to explore not what it means to be a good person, but what it means to exist as you really are, full-throated. What it means to make uncomfortable choices, sit in hard feelings, lean into off-putting traits. It’s not an easy read, but each story brings its own reflection.
Favorites:
Sun City
Life Among the Terranauts
Better Not Tell You Now
Least Favorites:
Teacher
23 Months
Chance Me
“Our people had moved to Bounty because the land was there and it was empty, and now all we had was the emptiness and one another. We had the wide sky and tall grass and a sun that felt good when you’d waited for it half the year.” (22)
“Let it find the illness, she thought. Let it bring the answers. Let it be the cure for something.” (73)
“Life is long and strange and none of us sees what God does.” (77)
“I was a little disappointed in him, that my murderer was so selfish, that what he really wanted was just his life back… I wondered what I should say to him next, if it should be comforting or something sharp, to remind him of his crimes.” (93)
“We’d refused to learn our lesson, because to be afraid of fortune-telling meant that we really believed our fortunes could be told. It meant that our futures were somewhere waiting for us, traps already baited and set.” (103)
“Her stare looked like an animal’s, stunned still in the middle of a road. Whatever was coming would crash straight into her, and she wasn’t going to do anything to try and stop it.” (105)
“This is what it felt like from the moment [children] were born. He’d forgotten how it was, the light and the shadow. Still there, after all these years, his capacity to be destroyed.” (121)
“And when doubt crept in, some of God crept out, and there was an empty space in my stomach that grew no matter what I filled it with. When I came to NovaTerra, I’d already been hungry for a long time.” (230-231)
Horrocks writes about the depths of family ties, grief, growing up, morality, and the exhaustive pressures of existence. Similar to The Worst Person in the World (2021), Life Among the Terranauts forces the reader to explore not what it means to be a good person, but what it means to exist as you really are, full-throated. What it means to make uncomfortable choices, sit in hard feelings, lean into off-putting traits. It’s not an easy read, but each story brings its own reflection.
Favorites:
Sun City
Life Among the Terranauts
Better Not Tell You Now
Least Favorites:
Teacher
23 Months
Chance Me
“Our people had moved to Bounty because the land was there and it was empty, and now all we had was the emptiness and one another. We had the wide sky and tall grass and a sun that felt good when you’d waited for it half the year.” (22)
“Let it find the illness, she thought. Let it bring the answers. Let it be the cure for something.” (73)
“Life is long and strange and none of us sees what God does.” (77)
“I was a little disappointed in him, that my murderer was so selfish, that what he really wanted was just his life back… I wondered what I should say to him next, if it should be comforting or something sharp, to remind him of his crimes.” (93)
“We’d refused to learn our lesson, because to be afraid of fortune-telling meant that we really believed our fortunes could be told. It meant that our futures were somewhere waiting for us, traps already baited and set.” (103)
“Her stare looked like an animal’s, stunned still in the middle of a road. Whatever was coming would crash straight into her, and she wasn’t going to do anything to try and stop it.” (105)
“This is what it felt like from the moment [children] were born. He’d forgotten how it was, the light and the shadow. Still there, after all these years, his capacity to be destroyed.” (121)
“And when doubt crept in, some of God crept out, and there was an empty space in my stomach that grew no matter what I filled it with. When I came to NovaTerra, I’d already been hungry for a long time.” (230-231)
March 19, 2021
The Vexations was one of my favorite books of last year, and Horrocks is a stylish and perceptive writer. For me, this collection of stories didn't pack a punch like The Office of Historical Corrections; they felt more disparate. One of my favorite things about short story collections is when I can feel their internal momentum or coherence. Granted, I've been very stressed out for the past few weeks, so it may be my faulty attention rather than the book's weakness, and again, I think very highly of Horrocks. But only a few of the stories stuck with me (one about a lesbian granddaughter coming to visit the woman she thought was her grandmother's partner, the other an uproarious send-up of the computer game Oregon Trail). The others faded too quickly, and the last about the crew of terranauts rang true in its claustrophobia and also its indictment of the violent ruthlessness of masculine ideologues, but it felt a little underdeveloped. Though Horrocks wrote "The Sleep," about a Michigan town that decides to hibernate through the winter, at least a decade ago, it did feel like a disturbing and powerful evocation of this socially distanced year. The three-star rating reflects that I liked but didn't love the collection.
October 29, 2021
What impressed me most about Life Among the Terranauts, as well as ome of Caitlin Horrocks other works, is her ability to write powerful stories where so little of import actually occurs. With many of the stories in this book, I would not have read them if someone had only told me their basic premise. However, Horrocks' ability to paint her characters' thought processes, emotional states, and relationships makes her stories enthralling regardless of the plot. "Norwegian for Troll" in this collection exemplifies that ability wonderfully.
Horrocks also branches out with some sci-fi (or at least sci-fi adjacent) stories such as "The Sleep" and "Life among the Terranauts" both of which were quite engaging. Even these, which center on fantastical premises of human hibernation and life in a biodome (sans Pauly Shore) maintain a similar tone to the others, where even in calm moments, there is a current of unease. These stories emphasized setting more than her past works (admittedly my memory of This Is Not Your City is foggy), and I found that she was quite successful in this regard, especially in "The Sleep" and "Sun City". An exception to this was "On the Oregon Trail" which felt jarringly out-of-place to me.
Still, these stories hold up well either individually or a collection, and I highly recommend the book.
Horrocks also branches out with some sci-fi (or at least sci-fi adjacent) stories such as "The Sleep" and "Life among the Terranauts" both of which were quite engaging. Even these, which center on fantastical premises of human hibernation and life in a biodome (sans Pauly Shore) maintain a similar tone to the others, where even in calm moments, there is a current of unease. These stories emphasized setting more than her past works (admittedly my memory of This Is Not Your City is foggy), and I found that she was quite successful in this regard, especially in "The Sleep" and "Sun City". An exception to this was "On the Oregon Trail" which felt jarringly out-of-place to me.
Still, these stories hold up well either individually or a collection, and I highly recommend the book.
March 2, 2021
In the briefly noted section of a recent issue of the New Yorker there was a review of Caitlin Horrocks book, Life Amoing the Terranauts. Normally I don't read short story collections but the title of the book and the ethusiastic review encouraged to go out and find the book. I'm glad I did since this is a really good selection of stories. Among the best were the title story of a experimental society that is quickly falling apart, which may be a harbinger of the world to come. Also, the Sleep, which seems to be a prediction of what this world has been like in the last 12 months of the pandemic, the Oregon Trail, a story that reminds me of when I taught 8th grade social studies and had my students play the game, and All Over With Fire, in which a man undergoing a midlife crisis runs off to the Czech Republic. There is a passage in which the tour guide is showing off places where people have been burned to death, murdererd, drowned, etc which remains me of a tour of Prague my wife and I took three years ago.
April 21, 2023
An impressively well-crafted collection of stories that investigate the ubiquitousness of loneliness and isolation, even among friends, lovers, and colleagues. That's not to say that the stories are universally depressing or cynical--there's hope and humor in these pages, too--but they do force the reader to confront the ways in which we all exist as solitary creatures alongside our communal identities.
Favorites include, "The Sleep," the story of a town that turns to hibernation as an answer to life's problems; "Better Not Tell You Know," which follows a group of young girls as they deal with the consequences of trying to tell the future; "Paradise Lodge," a longer story covering the shortcomings of eco-tourism; and "Life Among the Terranauts," the tale of a billionaire's guilt-fueled experiment turned horrific disaster.
Favorites include, "The Sleep," the story of a town that turns to hibernation as an answer to life's problems; "Better Not Tell You Know," which follows a group of young girls as they deal with the consequences of trying to tell the future; "Paradise Lodge," a longer story covering the shortcomings of eco-tourism; and "Life Among the Terranauts," the tale of a billionaire's guilt-fueled experiment turned horrific disaster.
February 11, 2021
I loved these, but am not sure why. For some reason I'm wanting to call them "old school" short stories. They're grounded in small details and personal interactions (slash miscommunications), often leading to a shift in perspective. Here were my favorites:
*The Sleep, about a hibernating town
*Norwegian for Troll, about a family visit that makes Annika see her life differently
*Better Not Tell You Now, about preteen girls' love of fortune telling
*Chance Me, about an awkward father-son college tour
*All Over with Fire, about a midlife crisis
*The Untranslatables, constructed around words like Scheissenbedauern, "being disappointed when something turns out better than expected"
*The Sleep, about a hibernating town
*Norwegian for Troll, about a family visit that makes Annika see her life differently
*Better Not Tell You Now, about preteen girls' love of fortune telling
*Chance Me, about an awkward father-son college tour
*All Over with Fire, about a midlife crisis
*The Untranslatables, constructed around words like Scheissenbedauern, "being disappointed when something turns out better than expected"
October 26, 2021
I was impressed by the range of this story collection's settings, premises, characters, and narrative voices. In general, I preferred the shorter, more conceptual pieces to the longer ones that involved more exposition and complicated worldbuilding; "Better Not Tell You Now," "On the Oregon Trail," and "The Untranslatables," in particular, stayed with me, as did the longer "Murder Games."
As a whole, this collection defies categorization; it combines heartfelt realism with satire with speculative, sci-fi, and dystopian elements. What holds this variety pack of stories together is a common curiosity about what it might mean to make a new, better world--if that's even possible--and what elements of the world left behind we might look back upon with longing.
As a whole, this collection defies categorization; it combines heartfelt realism with satire with speculative, sci-fi, and dystopian elements. What holds this variety pack of stories together is a common curiosity about what it might mean to make a new, better world--if that's even possible--and what elements of the world left behind we might look back upon with longing.
December 6, 2024
This collection wasn’t quite as “wow” for me as This is Not Your City, but still very inventive and intriguing with that skillful blend of precision and conciseness that I admire in her work. She articulates so clearly what her characters are thinking and feeling in the most painful or awkward circumstances, and does it with such empathy that even though it’s uncomfortable for us as readers, we can still relate. I also enjoy how she reveals just a little at a time so that we become more acquainted with and invested in the characters before we fully comprehend what’s happening to them or what they’ve been through. Enjoyed it enough that I will likely reread at some point and will definitely share with some of my favorite people.
February 22, 2021
This collection of 14 stories showcases Caitlin Horrock's skill and range of short storytelling. From quirky people to speculative fiction, there is a good variety, and I enjoyed them all. I love reading short stories because they are quick, and each one offers a unique perspective. They keep me reading and reignite my interest with anticipation, wondering what will be the next adventure. Now that my Horrock intro has whetted my curiosity, I will be reading The Vexations soon to get a taste of this author's skills in that format.
April 8, 2021
A few of the stories in this selection of short stories were completely gripping. I found Horrocks to write incredibly relatable to common characters. Many of the stories touched on loneliness and belonging in beautiful ways. As a School Psychologist, I found the story Teacher to be particularly compelling and realistic. Overall, many of the stories in the second half of the book fell flat for me including the title story. While many of the stories had similar themes, they were not cohesive enough for me to really want to keep reading as a got further in,
February 2, 2023
I’ve read everything by my former prof and let me just say LAtT does not disappoint! I feel all of Caitlin’s graciousness and earnest redemption for characters across these stories. And that’s not bias speaking that is just skill and craft. From someone ordering from rivaling Greek restaurants to traveling Europe while getting their degree from GRCC/GVSU, the characters in these stories speak for themselves individually and together, somehow improving on the This is Not Your City collection before it while simultaneously shining through fresh and new with modern twists. Give it a read!
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