Glorious Frazzled Beings

by Angelique LaLonde

Home is where we love, suffer, and learn. Some homes we chose, others are inflicted upon us, and still others are bodies we are born into. In this astounding collection of stories, human and more-than-human worlds come together in places we call home.

Four sisters and their mother explore their fears while teeny ghost people dress up in fragments of their children’s clothes. A somewhat-ghost tends the family garden. Deep in the mountains, a shapeshifting mother must sift through her ancestors’ gifts and the complexities of love when one boy is born with a beautiful set of fox ears and another is not. In the wake of her elderly mother’s tragic death, a daughter tries to make sense of the online dating profile she left behind. And a man named Pooka finds new ways to weave new stories into his abode, in spite of his inherited suffering.

A startling and beguiling story collection, Glorious Frazzled Beings is a love song to the homes we make, keep, and break.

Genres: Short Stories, Canada, Fiction, Anthologies, Indigenous, Literary Fiction, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2021

Reviews

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts while reading this short story collection: That’s so weird, WTF, I don’t get it, that’s gorgeous, is there a style you can’t do, what is going on, I’m lost, imagery imagery imagery, that can’t be the end, this is refreshing, huh, hmm, oof, gasp, marry me.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't absolutely love every story in this book (there are a lot and some are only a few pages!) but some are so amazing, capturing my imagination, that I have to give the collection as a whole five stars. Incredible writing, incredible insights. Wonderfully strange, devastatingly sad, magical and real.

Lalonde's range in terms of style and voice is enormous, impressive. The themes of motherhood really got me in the heart and gut. Memorable and extraordinary Indigenous characters as well. (The author's mom is Métis). A bit of casual queerness.

I was really craving a book whose prose I could just sink into, which Glorious Frazzled Beings really delivered on! I was tempted often to record Lalonde's astonishing sentences and phrases but instead I just let them wash over me. Highly recommended!

[Penny (Literary Hoarders) · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are 3 short-story collections on the 2021 Giller Prize Longlist. This is the 1st of the 3 I've read. They are all different, strange and many with different ways of telling a story (footnotes, text messages, etc.). It's hard to say at this point if this is a Shortlist contender. I don't see it there, but I'm not really sure what to think/feel this year - the Longlist is a surprising one so I'm thinking the Shortlist may be even more so?

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you have nothing you have to craft your way into things to get anything you really want. It takes everything. p170

Once you figure out how to dwell unflinchingly in your own power, then you become masterful, know who to be fully who and what you are...always a bit unknown, or a lot. p203
from the story Ropes of Entropy

In this glorious, fearless, motley collection of short short to longer and connected stories, Angelique Lalonde plays with extremes, slipping through boundaries of space, time, and the impossible. I do hope that she will expand on the characters, the places, and the insights she has introduced, to give us something even more glorious, more lengthy.

6/7


We learn such confidence from books, feeling like if we just look in the right place , the thing that brought us happiness will be there again, every time we turn the page back. p129
from the story Understanding Groceries

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is great in this collection of short stories, but I don’t think I ever fully understood or enjoyed them.

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

GLORIOUS FRAZZLED BEINGS by Angélique Lalonde is a stunning short story collection! I loved this book! I read this book quite slowly over two weeks as some of the stories dealt with some heavy topics such as grief and addiction but overall it was a really enjoyable read! I loved the surrealism, magic and inventiveness in this book! I liked all the stories and my faves were all from Part Three: Home Breaking. The Pregnancy Test which is a story about women who find a pregnancy test in a public washroom. I loved the discussion around pregnancy, motherhood, privacy and womanhood. And my other two fave stories Ropes of Entropy and Her Unspoken Name are interconnected featuring the same characters. I loved the touch of magic and interplay between humans and animals in those two stories. This is a great debut and I would love to read anything by this author in the future!
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And a big congrats to Angélique for being chosen for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist!
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Thank you to Giller Prize for my gifted copy!

[Anne-Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this debut collection of short stories from LaLonde.

The collections centers of themes of home (making, going, breaking, etc.) and family and all the myriad ways those can be formed, broken, and be made anew. There's also a strong nature element in many of her stories, focusing on how characters interact with the land, animals, and nature more broadly. She has a talent for incorporating small weird elements into (most of) her stories that gave them a delicious flavour.

Like most collections, there were some real hits for me, and some average stories.
For me her longer stories were more successful than the shorter, more flash, pieces of fiction (i.e. less than 15-10 pages). The longer ones tended to have either those weird or magical realism or surreal/fantastical elements that made them pop or a deeper dive into the psyche of family dynamics, while the shorter pieces couldn't get those same impacts. I think given some more time to develop as a writer she'll get there.

I see why it was nominated for the Giller and I'll keep an eye out for any of her future works because I think she'll be a really strong Canadian literary talent in the coming years.

Also isn't that cover just stunning??

[Susana Jacques · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not an eloquent review by any means. I received this book from LittleFreeLibrary. It came as a package books that were short listed winners of the ScotiaBank Giller Prize. Too make a long story short, by 1/4 of reading, forcing myself to give it a chance or trying to make some sense of it, I just couldn't. Today, I opened up the trash bin and in it went. Today, it sounded like complete gibberish that makes no sense whatsoever. Today, I question the sanity of anybody who read and judged it - with cheese. hahaha I tried.

[Macy Joy Christoffersen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t know what was going on half the time (the entire time).

[Natasha Penney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Ben Truong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glorious Frazzled Beings is an anthology of short stories written by Angélique LaLonde. Divided into four parts, this anthology is a startling and beguiling collection that is a love song to the homes we make, keep, and break.

This book is short-listed for the 2021 edition of Scotiabank Giller Prize.

For the most part, this collection of short stories was written somewhat well, albeit a tad uneven. Glorious Frazzled Beings is a smart collection of short stories with the theme of home and belonging as the characters within searches for space – be it physical, emotional or psychological to find a place of refuge and rest.

Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and Glorious Frazzled Beings is not an exception. It ranges in style from realism to the fantastical, with pieces that are dramatically rendered and others that read more like summary and are replete with vague language. It shows the wide breath and talent in LaLonde's talent, but in doing so ruined the literary flow from one story to the next.

All in all, Glorious Frazzled Beings is written rather well and is a wonderful love song to families – the ones we are born with and the ones we make along the way. With a varied of writing styles and genres, it shows LaLonde's writing talent, but makes the anthology feel a tad mismatched and uneven.

[MargaretDH · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have liked this. This has so many elements that are right up my alley: fantastical/magical realism sketches, Canada, some wilderness stuff, poetic language. But I had to push myself to finish this. LaLonde's debut is a combo of short stories and what I might call sketches or prose poems. I did quite like a couple of the stories, especially one about the boy born with a set of fox ears. But the rest of the work felt murky and opaque to me, and I struggled to connect. Many of the shorter sketches felt incomplete - not that they should have been longer, but that I missed the point. In other places I wanted more plot, more character or more scene setting.

I think this definitely has an audience out there, and I'm very sorry it wasn't me. I picked this up because it was on the Giller 2021 shortlist, and I don't think I would have finished it if it wasn't.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this collection. Thematically, the stories are very contemporary with fascinating characters at the core of each. Using “Home” as a starting point, a wide range of subject matter is explored, from people who are unhoused on earth to extra-terrestrial life elsewhere. The author writes in a vividly descriptive, unexpected way that had me often smiling to myself at the clever and creative images being conjured up.

3.5/5

[Bree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surreal, truth, impractical and fantasy?

This was very different from any short stories Ive read and honestly wouldn’t have finished it if it wasn’t for the short list of this years Giller’s. I was taken with a few stories and left confused with others. Lalonde did a bang up job with pushing boundaries and dusting off your whimsical side.

3.5

[Paige Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

this short story collection exists to me in extremes (extreme hits and extreme misses), but for an assigned reading, I still think it was interesting and had evocative commentary on humanity, spirituality, and relationships

[Lauren Alexandra Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this but I found it hard to get through. I like short stories and poetic prose and magical realism, but none of these stories really grabbed me. I also felt like they weren’t a cohesive collection, and several really wandered off. It was different..?

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

"more-than-human" worlds

[Deanna MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s well written and interesting. But ... I didn’t like it.

[Laurie Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m happy to have finished this beauty last night (finished four now). As a constant reader I’m always shocked and happy when an author can surprise me with their originality. This book does that. Often times I was like what the heck? But also wow that’s a cool idea. Sometimes the stories were a little disjointed for me with not tons of fluidity between them but they were super as individuals with tons to think about.

[Fraser Simons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picture a person putting nails to a chalk board in front of an audience of self identifying genre police, watching them all cringe, and then saying, ‘There was a point to that.’ That’s roughly what it felt like reading this, at times.

Some of this works some of it doesn’t. The writing is overall quite good and eclectic in its ability to go from one genre convention to the next, slipping in and out of voices convincingly. The stories do not care to telegraph what they are genre-wise. Some remain in the tone and genre established, others morph. There seems to be no rhyme or reason or hint of consistency. A realistic portrayal of a late 30s woman partnered with a self-centered, obsessive writer of a science fiction graphic novel, suddenly has him becoming a character in his own story, disappearing into its pages completely. Gone from the world. An old woman sets up a dating profile and dies under ostensibly suspicious circumstances. Just as we get to the heart of the
‘mystery’, the story is over. No catharsis. No resolution.

On one hand, it’s easy to admire the boldness of statements made in these pages. But they come to feel like they’re being made about conventions rather than actually serving the reader, or even in service to the best possible outcome for the story, even.

With all short story collections there are highs and lows but this was too much for me. There isn’t a hint of cohesiveness, despite the marketing material trumpeting. There are some definite good stories that I enjoyed and got on with the voice well. The next story, though, is a completely different voice, maybe genre. Structures vary widely. Flash fiction type stories become chapters in a multi-part overall story.

It’d be interesting if it wasn’t incredibly jarring so often and had it remotely telegraphed to the reader that this was _going somewhere_. Perhaps some stories are circled back to later on in the book? I put it aside with 100 pages left to go. Far more than I typically would have given a book, and only pushed through that far because it’s a Giller Prize shortlisted book and I wanted to finish them all. I suspect that while the structure may have held a meta kind of satisfaction for me in the end, if it does come back to previous stories or character, I began encountering stories at the mid mark that were simply uninteresting and continued in a voice that I didn’t enjoy or resonate with me, made further frustrating because I’d just read several stories that were good and were well constructed and enjoyable.

Honestly, one of the rare books that left me actually annoyed rather than just saying it wasn’t for me and putting it down, knowing it was for a different kind of reader. No idea who I could recommend this too. People who hate conventions and somehow delight in the idea of encountering authorial voice at the opposite ends of the spectrum from one another, so you are almost certain to dislike one or the other. And why why 2 stars, then? It’s trying something new and some stories did work. There is some interesting structure too, possibly, I just never found out if it pays off or not. Clearly it did work for some people, the judges are authors and clearly liked it.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best short story collection I've read so far! Lalonde doesn't shy away from things Canadians would rather forget. Full of metaphors I have yet to fully untangle. Surprised this work didn't win the Giller Prize. Was hooked on every page. Written so beautifully I swear there's magic in it. Favourite ones were "The Town Carmen Found," "Home (in Four Parts)," "Reflections for Rita-Mae," "The Pregnancy Test" (so original and ingenious yet so obvious and mundane), and "Ropes of Entropy/ Her Unspoken Name" (a twist on the Cain/ Abel story?).

From page 20: "Carmen's spirit was filled in the dream world, in her forest wanders, and the town Carmen found was rife with the stuff in which spirit could flourish, embedded thickly in the divine. Oh behold! she would exclaim in empty rooms wearing all the trappings of their inhabitants' messy lives. Alas, the glory! Bells ringing through the air, soft kisses of a humanity we wish for but otherwise fail to manifest. Quiet in the spaces between- absurdly and tenderly beautiful."

From page 95: "She tells you she has been reading articles online about pleasure and attempts to guide you through some pelvic exercises intended to increase your orgasmic potential. She tells you it is your birthright. All through this you are squeezing so hard with every muscle of your body, trying to shut her out without appearing disrespectful, because she is emotionally sensitive and you do not want to clamp down on her freedoms with your sorrow, although you wonder if her hard-won freedoms have something to do with where your sorrow came from in the first place."

[TJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was definitely in the top three of my favourite books of of 2022, and possibly of all time.
I enjoy books that leave a lot up to interpretation, allowing the reader to take away the meanings that are relevant to them. This book is meditative almost. It is poetic and visceral, as a lot of magical realism tends to be. Many reviews here say that it doesn't make sense or that it feels scattered or rambly, and to an extent, I agree. However, I think that that is the exact charm of the book. The second story, "the town carmen found", as beautifully written as it was, made almost no sense to me on my first read-through, but it still felt heavy, and impactful, and it sat with me for days. I read and re-read that story. I shared it with all my friends, and some of my family members so I could understand it better. What a beautiful thing when stories inspire you to think, and share with others.
I found myself connecting to a lot of the stories as they explored themes of womanhood, aging, generational trauma, indigenous knowledge, ghosts of the past, etc, and since many of them don't drag you along to obvious conclusions, you can really chew on the concepts for yourself. Many of the themes explored are not conclusive in reality, and are deeply personal and subconscious.
Hence why I called this book "meditative". These stories reach something deeper, to me, they reached the same level that poetry reaches. The words and stories act as a conduit for deeper, more personal thoughts, reflection and discussion, instead of trying to make much chronological sense.
Read this if you're ok with a bit of confusion, and if you want to create the experience for yourself. Definitely don't read this if you're not into magical realism. In my experience, you get out of it what you put into it.

[Elizabeth D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stories of magic in our world, unseen by most, but part of the cosmic existence that can only be glimpsed by those who take the time to look. These unrelated short stories often seem like fairy tales blended with family histories and journeys of self discovery. This feels like something I’ve been wanting to read since before it ever existed.

The Woman with the Big Head tending garden, the Boy with Fox Ears and the boy without, as well as the Teeny Ghosts who dress up in clothes are just some of the Glorious Frazzled Beings woven into these stories. Amid the magic and wonder are very real people dealing with dysfunctional family issues, substance abuse, and the tragic loss felt by family members when Native women go missing.

In the end, we learn that the fabric of our world is not fixed into one pattern, and our ability to tell our own stories is the real magic.

[Jocelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first story, but found less enjoyment in the rest of the stories. Some particular ones in the 3rd part intrigued me but I felt like they weren't complete enough stories to be included in this collection as they were.

Is Lalonde Métis? Because otherwise, these short stories have a large focus on Indigenous/Métis characters that I find a bit exploitative if coming from someone outside of the cultural heritage.

On the whole, this collection is a miss for me. I will likely stay away from short story collections for a while because I have noticed a pattern of general dislike after completion, which I think is more a factor in finishing all of the stories one after another quickly versus consumption over a loooong period of time (a bit ironic since this took me literally months to finish reading and I still ended up disliking it).

[Glenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would actually have given this a 4.5/5 star rating if that was available, but can't bring myself to lower it to 4/5 because it is just so beautifully written. Lalonde has such a unique way of seeing things and bringing them to life with her lyrically beautiful prose. Her imagery is stunning and each story is like falling through another rabbit hole (fox hole?) into a different world. The only thing that was preventing me from giving unabashedly giving it a full 5/5 was the addition of one story that went about explaining the previous one. It was the only time I questioned where I was in her imaginary world and found it to be a little more stating facts than I would have liked. But the rest - oh, the rest! Easy to see why this book was shortlisted. Truly loved it!

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - This is a set of short stories surrounding home, what it means to be a woman and a mother and often the burdens of family and relationships. It explores complex family dynamics that often drift in to the supernatural or folklore.
I sometimes struggle with short stories in that I connect with some and others feel totally unconnected to each other or the themes. I will say some of these certainly venture in to the weird - some worked and some didn't.
I enjoyed Lady With The Big Head Chronicle, Malarkey, A Home For Secrets, Ropes of Entropy, and The Pregnancy Test.
I will say what worked is the writing - Lalonde's prose was beautiful and there were a few lines that i went back and relistened too a couple of times because they were just so well written!

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book of odd and unusual short stories, I found it lacking. Each story, be it two pages or 20, felt like a quick summery of a much longer, more interesting story, nothing flowed right, everything seemed rushed. It feels like the author put together their story outlines instead of their actual stories.

It really just gave the air of the pretentious books I read in college to feel smarter, like it was dripping in metaphor, but forgot character, plot, setting, atmosphere and flow to go right into the metaphor. There was no heart to these stories, nothing, just the sense of "read this for a feeling of superiority," but without any depth to it.

[Kathie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glorious Frazzled Beings is a book of surreal short stories. In each story, the main characters are either interacting with otherworldly characters, are in surreal situations or are engaged in contorted ruminations about their lives. Emotionally the stories range from gently quirky to depressing to downright disturbing.

LaLonde's writing has a poetic, almost lyrical, quality to it, but in a number of stories it veers into convoluted prose that distracts from any narrative. The premises for the stories were entertaining, but a number of stories got bogged down in the characters' introspection. This author clearly has talent, but ultimately this book just didn’t appeal to me.

[Gemington · Rating 3 out of 5]

TW: loss, death, drugs, abuse, violence, bestiality

This collection of short stories was full of fresh ideas and combinations that reflect an inquisitive and creative mind. At times I found it extremely uncomfortable and distasteful, but also needed to check myself. The author asks hard questions and is interested in piecework and relations. There is so much sorrow, pain and disappointment here. There is so much that is secret and kept apart for not being okay or not quite fitting in. What does it mean to be a Glorious Frazzled Creature and how often do we miss them by intentionally averting our gaze or refusing to look beyond ourselves and our own problems.

[Justine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was our September read for the PatiosandPagesYYC Bookclub. Our theme was Northern Canada.

I love the cover of this book and the authors writing and unfortunately that’s it. This book didn’t do it for me. I’m bad with needing to be smart to decipher what books what instead of them being upfront so I didn’t get it. A few of the short stories I enjoyed but most I didn’t. I did enjoy the stories that had indigenous aspects woven through. I would read a full length novel from this author because like I said earlier I did enjoy the writing.
I’m not sure if I would recommend this book.