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Cosmogony: Stories
An energetic, witty collection of stories where the supernatural meets the anomalies of everyday life--deception, infidelity, lost cats, cute memes, amateur pornography, and more.
There are analogies between being female and being left-handed, I think, or being an animal.
A woman answers a Craigslist ad (to write erotic diaries for money). A woman walks onto a tennis court (from her home at the bottom of the ocean). A woman goes to the supermarket and meets a friend's husband (who happens to be an immortal demon). A woman goes for a run (and accidentally time travels).
Cosmogony takes accounts of so-called normal life and mines them for inconsistencies, deceptions, and delights. Incorporating a virtuosic range of styles and genres (Wikipedia entry, phone call, physics equation, encounters with the supernatural), these stories reveal how the narratives we tell ourselves and believe are inevitably constructed, offering a glimpse of the structures that underlie and apparently determine human existence.
There are analogies between being female and being left-handed, I think, or being an animal.
A woman answers a Craigslist ad (to write erotic diaries for money). A woman walks onto a tennis court (from her home at the bottom of the ocean). A woman goes to the supermarket and meets a friend's husband (who happens to be an immortal demon). A woman goes for a run (and accidentally time travels).
Cosmogony takes accounts of so-called normal life and mines them for inconsistencies, deceptions, and delights. Incorporating a virtuosic range of styles and genres (Wikipedia entry, phone call, physics equation, encounters with the supernatural), these stories reveal how the narratives we tell ourselves and believe are inevitably constructed, offering a glimpse of the structures that underlie and apparently determine human existence.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2021
43 people are currently reading
2691 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Ives
23 books78 followersLucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
March 9, 2021
There were three stories in this book that I loved. ‘Cosmogony’ begins with the line ‘A few years ago a friend of mine married a demon’; this is not a metaphor, and it only gets wilder from there. ‘Scary Sites’ is all dialogue – a rambling, and totally fascinating, conversation between two unidentified people. ‘Guy’ – or, to be more specific, the first half of ‘Guy’ – is a wildly entertaining and original story (is ‘story’ even the right word?) which takes the form of a Wikipedia entry about the concept of the guy (‘it is commonly believed that there were no true guys until the 1970s’).
The others I found mostly disappointing. They are largely of a piece, and seem like they could be about the same person at different points in a certain period of her life: a woman in her twenties or thirties, who marries young and then gets divorced (still young), and almost always narrates in first person. The woman says things like ‘I am attempting to experience a feeling of warmth’, lines typical of the kind of arch, detached narrator of so many novels and story collections about 21st-century life, which is exactly what I had hoped to get away from by reading this book.
I need to stop doing a particular thing I do, which is this: I read a description of a book and my mind zeroes in on the bits I find personally appealing – in this case ‘stories where the supernatural meets the anomalies of everyday life’ and ‘a virtuosic range of styles and genres’ – and disregards everything else. I see now that I made the wrong assumptions about Cosmogony. I wanted much more of the supernatural, and formal experimentation in every story. The truly out-there stories are by far the best. In the others, there’s often an undercurrent of absurdity, but it isn’t fully realised (as it might be in the short fiction of, for example, Elizabeth Tan, Jen George or Irenosen Okojie), and that’s what I really wanted from the book.
I received an advance review copy of Cosmogony from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Linktree
The others I found mostly disappointing. They are largely of a piece, and seem like they could be about the same person at different points in a certain period of her life: a woman in her twenties or thirties, who marries young and then gets divorced (still young), and almost always narrates in first person. The woman says things like ‘I am attempting to experience a feeling of warmth’, lines typical of the kind of arch, detached narrator of so many novels and story collections about 21st-century life, which is exactly what I had hoped to get away from by reading this book.
I need to stop doing a particular thing I do, which is this: I read a description of a book and my mind zeroes in on the bits I find personally appealing – in this case ‘stories where the supernatural meets the anomalies of everyday life’ and ‘a virtuosic range of styles and genres’ – and disregards everything else. I see now that I made the wrong assumptions about Cosmogony. I wanted much more of the supernatural, and formal experimentation in every story. The truly out-there stories are by far the best. In the others, there’s often an undercurrent of absurdity, but it isn’t fully realised (as it might be in the short fiction of, for example, Elizabeth Tan, Jen George or Irenosen Okojie), and that’s what I really wanted from the book.
I received an advance review copy of Cosmogony from the publisher through Edelweiss.
TinyLetter | Linktree
March 13, 2021
Ending with this bodega cat story....excellent. So many of these I started and was like "hmm" and got maybe a third through and was like "I don't know about this..." and then just a few pages later was like fully invested. These are somewhat fragment-y but not that fragment-y, really stimulating, fluctuating between accessible/esoteric, narrative/conceptual, kind of """low brow"""/"""highbrow.""" They're cool!
March 17, 2021
This book is so weird and cool! It contains so many interesting narrative styles shifting from realistic (yet often jarring situations) to more conceptual explorations of the physical and metaphysical world, with stories that introduce demon characters, physics equations, and time travel theories. I often felt like the stories could have been narrated by the same first-person character but I couldn’t say for certain. The narrators keep you at a distance which leaves plenty of room for your own theories and analysis, which I think was done really well in this collection. There are also so many instances of unique framing, or where the story shifts unexpectedly into something more meta and self-aware. I love a short story collection that feels a little unsettling at times yet can be reflective of the way it is to exists as a person in real life.
March 8, 2021
COSMOGONY by Lucy Ives is a terrific short story collection! I was super excited to read this book since I really enjoyed her other novel Loudermilk. This collection has the same smart and funny writing. There were several stories that got me laughing. As always with a short story collection there were some stories that resonated with me more than others but I liked all of them. My fave story was Cosmogony which starts off with a woman who marries a demon. I read this book in one day and definitely recommend it if you’re a fan of short stories! I’m excited to read more from Lucy Ives!
.
Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my advance review copy!
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Thank you to Soft Skull Press for my advance review copy!
May 4, 2022
Read this one on a plane. 12 short stories that mostly reach the surreal in a sort of dreamlike way. They weren’t overly complicated, but very clever with some definite symbolic riffs and meanings. (I’m sure half of the symbolism went over my head, could be fun to dig into this further) Lovely little brain teasers in a way. They’re mostly about regular, emotionally-fraught human things - and there’s a few stories where the humans sort of interlope into the animal kingdom (or into the supernatural kingdom of demons and angels) which seems to be some sort of clever message about our absurdity as a species, it’s done in a funny way.
The overriding theme to me was also on narrative as each story has a very unique structure. What makes a narrative, how do we create stories, how fantastical are our stories when compared to reality? Is there really a reality as all of life is essentially composed of the stories we tell ourselves or each other. Memories are always unreliable. Again, our somewhat hilarious absurdity as a species. Plenty of fun tangents to think about.
A couple weeks have passed already since I've finished this one and had the time to write something about it! So - I'll just leave a few brief notes I jotted on each story here -
A Throw of the Dice
A woman writes copy for a porn site, is landing a job writing diaries for porn actresses while her husband befriends an ex-Mormon
Cosmogony
Friend marries an old demon (lol), so narrator begins dating an “angel”. Causes drama between the two women, the story then sort of examines our current state of life - in our secular ways with the news feed and such - is this supposed to be better than living in the cosmic zone? Pretty hilarious, do we, as humans, really have any idea what is going on?
Recognition of this World is Not the Invention of it
Narrator is married to an alcoholic named Hank and they are playing a game of murder.
Scary Sites
Written like bullet points in a notes app, a gossip session about a circle of friends
The Care Bears Find and Kill God
Starts with anxiety on a plane (fun reading on a plane eek, lol)
Narrator’s job is writing copy for some art, she has a strange relationship with her gay boss, and then the suicide portrait by Frida Kahlo
Bitter Tennis
An editor meets her author at a game of tennis
Is she dead?
She happens to live at the bottom of the ocean
Louise Nevelson
Loved this one - probably my favorite
Trust
About an artist who works in a gallery
The Poisoners
About the affair of the “good ones”
Guy
Wikipedia entry for the word guy, seems to be all about the footnotes
The Volunteer
Narrator runs into time travel (literally - pretty funny premise)
Ersatz Panda
About the word ersatz in a way
And bodega cats
And narration
The overriding theme to me was also on narrative as each story has a very unique structure. What makes a narrative, how do we create stories, how fantastical are our stories when compared to reality? Is there really a reality as all of life is essentially composed of the stories we tell ourselves or each other. Memories are always unreliable. Again, our somewhat hilarious absurdity as a species. Plenty of fun tangents to think about.
A couple weeks have passed already since I've finished this one and had the time to write something about it! So - I'll just leave a few brief notes I jotted on each story here -
A Throw of the Dice
A woman writes copy for a porn site, is landing a job writing diaries for porn actresses while her husband befriends an ex-Mormon
Cosmogony
Friend marries an old demon (lol), so narrator begins dating an “angel”. Causes drama between the two women, the story then sort of examines our current state of life - in our secular ways with the news feed and such - is this supposed to be better than living in the cosmic zone? Pretty hilarious, do we, as humans, really have any idea what is going on?
Recognition of this World is Not the Invention of it
Narrator is married to an alcoholic named Hank and they are playing a game of murder.
Scary Sites
Written like bullet points in a notes app, a gossip session about a circle of friends
The Care Bears Find and Kill God
Starts with anxiety on a plane (fun reading on a plane eek, lol)
Narrator’s job is writing copy for some art, she has a strange relationship with her gay boss, and then the suicide portrait by Frida Kahlo
Bitter Tennis
An editor meets her author at a game of tennis
Is she dead?
She happens to live at the bottom of the ocean
Louise Nevelson
Loved this one - probably my favorite
Trust
About an artist who works in a gallery
The Poisoners
About the affair of the “good ones”
Guy
Wikipedia entry for the word guy, seems to be all about the footnotes
The Volunteer
Narrator runs into time travel (literally - pretty funny premise)
Ersatz Panda
About the word ersatz in a way
And bodega cats
And narration
March 13, 2022
2.5 rounded up: it kept my attention but I really didn’t understand the stories at all, I don’t think. This author has mastered conversational writing. It kind of has this feel of actually being there. And while I had no idea of what was going on, I did feel like the main characters were talking to me, or that I was there listening to them directly. The author is also really good at describing what it’s like to just be living and not know or understand or fully comprehend mundane life happenings/the people around us. I got a sense of feeling lost in life and not being able to fully communicate with people, and it seemed very realistic. Her stories end abruptly, though, and I can’t see a point to most of them. Only a few I would have liked to know more, like obviously the cat one. Read this book if you like: tennis, Gen X divorcées, art gallery groupies, not-famous artists, not knowing what the heck is really happening and what is some precocious metaphor for some other symbolism entirely.
April 6, 2021
“As this ancient story purports to show, everyone has, at some level, chosen the life they live. The story also claims— leaving out the reincarnation bit, which I don’t care as much about— that none of us could avoid choosing. And this is what I want you to understand, regarding me: I’m trying to figure out what to do in a scenario which I have no choice but, at some bare minimum, to keep on existing”
&
“Someone once said that fate is ‘the reflection of the world in a raindrop.’ This rings true to me but I have to unpack it. What I think this means is that everything that will
happen is already determined. But everything is not determined from some future point of origin/view. This is why fate is weird. It is a pattern. It’s everything about your life flattened into an image and foretold in reverse, from this very moment on. Es rever nid loterofd na ega mina ot nide nettal fefil ru oyt u obag nih tyre vesti. That’s why you can’t understand it now”
&
“Someone once said that fate is ‘the reflection of the world in a raindrop.’ This rings true to me but I have to unpack it. What I think this means is that everything that will
happen is already determined. But everything is not determined from some future point of origin/view. This is why fate is weird. It is a pattern. It’s everything about your life flattened into an image and foretold in reverse, from this very moment on. Es rever nid loterofd na ega mina ot nide nettal fefil ru oyt u obag nih tyre vesti. That’s why you can’t understand it now”
June 28, 2021
Existential, strange, and intellectual. Stories that will stay with you for awhile, as you continue to seek the truth about human nature.
August 26, 2021
The concepts were 10/10. The execution was -3/10. I wish I could get the time back I spent reading this book.
April 19, 2021
this was good
May 2, 2021
left me w an intense urge to start using the word "ersatz" more
November 7, 2020
This was an interesting collection of short stories, but you really have to be in the mood for it.
And I was, mostly, so it worked. A quirky bunch of tales that range from speculative fiction to heavy realism, featuring female characters on the brinks and verges, whose lives veer from plain and unexciting to new and strange…or sometimes don’t. So you’ll have a variety that way. It reminded me quite a lot of Amber Sparks’ short stories, which I love, though these were less economic with their wording. Mind you, nothing verbose or overwritten about this collection, in fact it reads very quickly, it just isn’t as specifically sparsely phrased as Sparks’ work.
I’ve never heard of this author prior to deciding to check out this book on Netgalley. Apparently she’s an author and a poet, you can kind of tell that from her writing, She does some very interesting things stylistically, excellent turns of phrases, lovely and very precise brush strokes upon her story canvases. I definitely appreciated that. It stands to mention that the publisher provided a lamentably formatted copy, the stories weren’t even properly separated, just clumped altogether. And that actually makes you notice how similar the protagonists are. Although the plots themselves are perfectly distinct. Loved the one about supernatural relationships and the last or second to last story (the fairy tale like one), they were definitely the most memorable too.
This may not be the most auspicious of reviews, especially since I’m the first to review it, but, you know, it kind of is, for me, I’m a tough critic with a wide base of comparison. But essentially, the writing is very good and there’s a great deal of originality. So yeah, all in all this was an enjoyable read. Might be something of an acquired taste, but it is tasty and worth checking out. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
And I was, mostly, so it worked. A quirky bunch of tales that range from speculative fiction to heavy realism, featuring female characters on the brinks and verges, whose lives veer from plain and unexciting to new and strange…or sometimes don’t. So you’ll have a variety that way. It reminded me quite a lot of Amber Sparks’ short stories, which I love, though these were less economic with their wording. Mind you, nothing verbose or overwritten about this collection, in fact it reads very quickly, it just isn’t as specifically sparsely phrased as Sparks’ work.
I’ve never heard of this author prior to deciding to check out this book on Netgalley. Apparently she’s an author and a poet, you can kind of tell that from her writing, She does some very interesting things stylistically, excellent turns of phrases, lovely and very precise brush strokes upon her story canvases. I definitely appreciated that. It stands to mention that the publisher provided a lamentably formatted copy, the stories weren’t even properly separated, just clumped altogether. And that actually makes you notice how similar the protagonists are. Although the plots themselves are perfectly distinct. Loved the one about supernatural relationships and the last or second to last story (the fairy tale like one), they were definitely the most memorable too.
This may not be the most auspicious of reviews, especially since I’m the first to review it, but, you know, it kind of is, for me, I’m a tough critic with a wide base of comparison. But essentially, the writing is very good and there’s a great deal of originality. So yeah, all in all this was an enjoyable read. Might be something of an acquired taste, but it is tasty and worth checking out. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
April 24, 2021
Cosmogony is filled with stories so wildly and artistically written that reviewers become infinitely more fantastical in their written analysis than ever before, simply through intellectual osmosis. These are the stories of women who, in their daily lives, experience a bent reality that includes demons, angels, time travel and more. Who says life can’t be weird. Get it. Read it. Rejoice in the freedom of thought the author displays. You might need it yourself some day.
I met this book at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, WA
I met this book at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, WA
May 23, 2021
I really liked this thing. The story where they play Murder is the goat. Also the title story. Love this voice.
April 23, 2022
I was thinking of giving this book a 2.5 rating, but after finally finishing it, I think this final rating is fair. To begin, I have always liked books that are intellectual and challenging. As a reader, books that are fun and care-free are always available. To find one that actually makes you think is rare. This book is definitely NOT one of those, but it wishes it could. Cosmogony is comprised of short stories but Jesus, the stories each feel like a long, never-ending novel. The vocabulary she uses is dense and filled with metaphors, analogies, etc, but it all feels so forced, her intellect so fake. As a reader, I want to be a part of the book I am reading. I want to be immersed in the story. I do not want to be a bystander, watching and finding out about what's happening from afar. And with this book, I felt just like that, as if I had no place in these stories. Lucy Ives is not a completely horrible author. She is talented and honestly, some of the stories were passable, hence the 2 stars instead of 1. But I would not recommend this book ever, and I only finished it due to this being a buddy read. It was a disappointing read, for sure.
March 11, 2021
These are playful and intelligent stories that delve at times into surrealism, are curious about the world, and the act of making. The opening piece follows an aspiring porn writer with unwieldy creative prowess; the title story imagines relations between a devil and angel. Others feature a character cheating at a game of Murder; a dialogue-driven examination of the origins of male violence and the effectiveness of the whisper network. Some pieces are explicitly metafictional in addressing the narrative process: “These aren’t real people, and yet these really are the things they really say and think and do.” Ives’ experiments in form are fun and impressive, as in one story that adopts the form of a Wikipedia article, or one of my favourites, which tackles the second person. Whatever form Ives adopts, COSMOGONY is self-aware and wary of the stories we tell ourselves and others, complimented by exuberant narrators and funny, well-crafted characters.
March 9, 2021
Happy book birthday to COSMOGONY, a new story collection by Lucy Ives! And many thanks to Soft Skull Press for gifting me an advance copy.
Ives has put together a darkly humorous collection of short stories that all begin with seemingly “normal” situations that end up a bit weird, twisted, or fantastical. A few of my favorites:
📖”Cosmogony” - The title story wherein the narrator begins dating an angel after her friend marries a demon
📖”Scary Sites” - A meandering dialogue ranging topics from shared acquaintances to past relationships and exploitative writing
📖”The Poisoners” - The tale of an affair gone wrong ... deadly wrong
Like many short story collections for many readers, not all of the stories worked for me. Some of the same techniques employed across stories became a bit repetitive, some of the topics felt forced. However, I think it’s always difficult to write short stories, to drop the reader down into a whole, cohesive world in such a short space. Ives excelled at this, committing fully to her vision for each story.
Ives has put together a darkly humorous collection of short stories that all begin with seemingly “normal” situations that end up a bit weird, twisted, or fantastical. A few of my favorites:
📖”Cosmogony” - The title story wherein the narrator begins dating an angel after her friend marries a demon
📖”Scary Sites” - A meandering dialogue ranging topics from shared acquaintances to past relationships and exploitative writing
📖”The Poisoners” - The tale of an affair gone wrong ... deadly wrong
Like many short story collections for many readers, not all of the stories worked for me. Some of the same techniques employed across stories became a bit repetitive, some of the topics felt forced. However, I think it’s always difficult to write short stories, to drop the reader down into a whole, cohesive world in such a short space. Ives excelled at this, committing fully to her vision for each story.
July 17, 2022
With the exception of “Guy,” which I could not finish, there was so much about these stories that I enjoyed. Usually three stars means that I probably won’t revisit a book, but I’d like to read these stories again when there’s not so much already going on inside my head. Curious about Ives’ other works.
November 24, 2023
Loved! Each story felt like a world, by the end I was wishing I had picked up a novel instead of the stories, I wanted to hang out with each narrator/protagonist longer. Ives is great at balancing framing, content, narrative, and explosion into philosophy.
March 30, 2024
A personal reflection that has little to do with the book : Woah. This book took me three months to finish. It was carried around in a tote during a laborious breakup. Remarkably, it was finished once ‘we’ (now myself and them) agreed to go no contact. I wish I could remember more of it, but I can’t say I was making memories the last three months, merely just getting by.
March 25, 2025
I enjoyed about 3 of these short stories but any of the others I simply couldn't get into/ skim read through/ or just plain skipped after the first couple of pages. Still gains a couple of stats as a good time killer on the plane
May 11, 2021
Read this in one day — it’s great! Smart, funny, poetic, weird. What else is there? I really admire writers that can juggle so much so efficiently and Ives does just that.
June 17, 2021
A funky little set of stories that grew on me as I progressed through the book, a tastebreaker to get me through a reading slump.
March 28, 2021
loved these weird stories
March 28, 2021
This book is brilliant
December 17, 2020
This short story collection focuses a lot on art and infidelity, but two stories in particular stuck out to me: the one this book is titled after, Cosmogony, in which the narrator's twenty-eight year old friend is dating a 200,001 year old demon, while also finding herself dating a literal angel. The other, Ersatz Panda, is an existential story prompted by the narrator's favorite bodega cat being swapped out with a peculiar and opposite feline imposter. These winding stories are often a written as a narrative stream of consciousness, with a lot to think about meshing together.
That being said, I don't think this collection was the best fit for my tastes. For me, I felt like a lot of these ramblings were incohesive and was often left wondering what the point of these stories were. A lot of the characters felt listless, jaded, and couldn't stay on any sort of topic. I could not see how their thought processes tied together with the stories they were trying to tell. It's possible that I'm just not "literary" enough to understand. If you enjoy stream of consciousness type writing, this might be for you.
January 1, 2022
this is a multi-chaptered look at a woman aged 28-31 who works as a freelance writer-editor, married young but regrets it and/or is divorced who spends her time thinking about being the smartest person in the room and making up mathematical equations masquerading as a short story collection. two stars for the fake wikipedia article about guys and the fact that there were brief moments of beautiful prose.
June 15, 2021
The title story and a few others are exceptional reads, but the rest are too self referential and opaque for my taste. Often times these stories read like they were written for the private enjoyment of graduate literature students, a little too experimental for the sake of it.
July 15, 2021
These short stories were really hit and miss. For the most part, these stories seem like someone's internal monolog which often times turns into rambling with little plot. They leave my questioning if I have the brain capacity to understand these or if these simply just lack depth and direction.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews