Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet

by A.A. Balaskovits

From the author of the best-selling  Magic For Unlucky Girls  comes a new collection of magical short stories with a fabulist feminist edge....
"Exquisite...This accomplished collection interlocks the horrific and the wondrous through deliciously dry humor, resulting in a unique must-read for fans of Angela Carter, Maria Dahvana Headley, and A.S. Byatt."
--Publishers Weekly


This new collection of unusual, fabulist fiction leads you down strange paths for dark encounters with familiar fairy tales, odd people from history, and weirdos who may be living right next door...Among the characters in these bizarre stories, a starving beauty finds a beast who can save her village, a man eats everything in sight but is never full, a woman gives birth to bloody animal parts, and a daughter is forced to dance every night to the reenactment of her fathers' murder.These tales invite you to spend time with people who, in the maddest of circumstances, chew their way forward. With elements of psychological horror, sly humor, and the fantastic, these stories will burrow under your skin, haunt your dreams, and make you wonder what worlds lie just beyond that tiny hole in the wall.For lovers of fractured fairy tales, and those who wonder what goes bump in the night, this collection is a must-read!

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Horror, Fiction

162 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2021

Reviews

[Shima · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not for you if you want:
- No violence, sexual assault or body horror.
- Realistic, likeable characters.
- Stories that make logical sense.

This is for when you want:
- Short easy-to-read stories.
- Dark fairy tale vibes.

My thoughts:
A collection of mostly very short, twisted fairy tale type stories featuring a series of violent women and children and unlikeable males. However, most stories are too short to really create any emotional impact, instead, they're mainly snappy weird uneasy vignettes. It's the sort of thing I like reading one of every now and then, but it's not my favourite type of story to read a whole bunch of right after one another (Let's say there is only so many ways I could read about people's arms getting snatched off before getting bored.)

Notable stories:
The Tale of a Hungry Beauty
A beauty and beast retelling featuring a very hungry, very practical Belle.
The Mad Monk's Weeping Daughter
Rasputin's daughter watches a reenacting of his father's death every night and cries. Audience pay to watch her. (Possibly my favourite story of the collection)
Strange Folk:
A woman is haunted by the silent ghost of small child. This story, unlike most in the collection, packs an emotional punch
How one girl played at slaughtering:
Short, creepy and weird, this is the best one of the type of stories that characterise the collection.

[leni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing wrong with it, I was just bored

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite collection of dark fairy tales has a smart, fabulist tone. "Strange Folk" stands out as an exceptional long story, but the collection is perfectly paced and features all lengths, including flash. Balaskovits balances somewhere between horror and hilarity, as evidenced by "The Skins of Strange Animals." Flawed families and imperfect bodies abound. Like many practitioners of this genre, Balaskovits guides us through the particular terror (and wonder) of living in a female body.

[Deborah Rubin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted so badly to like this book - but I gave up after half way through. I'm sure it will appeal to folks to like the weird and the curiosities of the world, unfortunately this is too weird and curious for me.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of stories, some delightfully creepy. 3/5 for most of the stories/the collection, 5/5 for a few incredibly high points, so 4/5 overall. The collection itself can be a little disjointed due to how short some of the pieces are, and it hits its high points in the longer stories. However, it’s also highly effective when it has several short stories or vignettes one after the other—the series of pieces regarding pregnancy/motherhood were disturbing and brilliant. In fact, it’s at its best when it hones in on themes of motherhood and womanhood.
I can’t shake an unsettling feeling of having read parts of it before, even though I know it’s a recent publication and I probably wouldn’t have had occasion to have read any of the stories individually. I think this speaks to how well Balaskovits gets under the reader’s skin and taps into the human experience.

Favorite stories:

“The Mad Monk’s Weeping Daughter”

“Strange Folk”—absolute masterpiece, deals with Bella’s trauma in a way that gets into the nitty-gritty of how it’s affected her daily life, but isn’t gratuitous in the slightest.

“The Skins of Strange Animals”—excels in strangeness and in what’s left unsaid and unexplained, far more so than if the author had spelled things out.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of stories is not my kind of thing, mostly a collection of re-imagined fairy tales (so, Hansel and Gretel from the POV of the stepmother is one of the more trad stories here; another, about a woman with no arms is a more left field take on the trope), mostly in generic Western European molds. I appreciate the logic of fairy tales, but reading a lot of them wears on my some.

But Balaskovits really sticks to the bit:) I mean, really, she kept plumbing and plumbing new horrible depths of the terrible things these stories can unearth.... She also has periodic stories that are set in a contemporary, more urban or suburban context but with fantastic elements, and I grooved on them when they came around. And they were good, though I don't think the endings of any of them were as striking as the fairy tales.

On the one hand, I think this writer is amazing. But I also don't know if I want to read her other book. Maybe I'll revisit in six months.

[Eule Luftschloss · Rating 3 out of 5]

trigger warning
grief, trauma, infanticide, mutilation miscarriage, suicide, stoning, witch hunt, self-harm, mutilation, cannibalism, sexual harassment, abortion, animal death

This was a weird one - as was promised.
Somehow, the stories didn't click with me, which is sad but okay.

There are fairytale retellings, Beauty and the Beast, Hänsel and Gretel, the Matchstick Girl. Some stories have a contemporary setting, some don't. It's a very mixed bag, a dark bag, a bag with ends fraying and turning into something else.

If this author were to write a novel, I might be interested, but I won't pick up further short stories.
The arc was provided by the publisher.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever. Creepy. Comforting?

I’ve never read anything so dark, yet so gentle. Although there are moments of shock and horror, I still feel strangely lulled and comforted. Reminiscent of those childhood tales and bedtime stories, but keeping me awake and thinking.

“Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet” and its precursor “Magic for Unlucky Girls” are truly unique reads. Balaskovits has such a knack for taking the familiar saccharine fairytales that we grew up with and twisting them into a fantastical and grotesque new shape.

[Azhar · Rating 3 out of 5]

creepy, sinister vignettes. preferred her first collection to this but it was still pretty decent. the trio of stories deeper in the collection (a girl without arms/a woman with no arms/an old woman with silver hands) was so interesting and fun to read, also clever to discover how it all came together tangled in each story’s entrails.

favourite stories include: match girl, the mother left behind, the candy children’s mother, they all could have loved you until you ate that child, mama had a baby and her head popped off, girl teeth.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Plenty of interesting premises and character ideas in these stories, but the execution fell flat on nearly all of them for me. Even the longer ones with some good build up fizzled out at their ends, which was disappointing.

[Jennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this slender tome while waking through the stacks at my library. The cover intrigued me, and I am always up for something dark especially macabre short stories. There were a few I really enjoyed, some were meh and others made me question what I had just read.

[Tiara Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brief reading slump later and I finally finished this short story collection. It’s bizarre to say the least and I find not that I definitely prefer the longer stories that the story 2-3 page stories, but it was entertaining for sure but very bizarre.

[Jennifer Pullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating collection. Fairy tales by way of body horror, ala Angela Carter. Short cryptic stories that follow the macabre dream logic of fairy tales down to the dark corners of the human psyche.

[Rachel Moyes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somebody stop me before I read another collection of "weird" short stories.

Most were too short to have much impact, though they felt like they were each supposed to land like a pit in your stomach. The longer stories approached being good and were enjoyable to read.

[Salem D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this one. It was refreshing to see a grounded depiction of sexual assault in a fantasy setting in several of the short stories. (That being said, this is one of those books that would benefit from a trigger warning at some points.)

[Michael B Tager · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. I am such a Balaskovits fan. A real talent.

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I'm just not built for adult fairytales, because most of them left me feeling confused and a little bit uncomfy.

[Kevin Zwiefelhofer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange, dark

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of shorts and story fragments of a dark fairy tale kind. An interesting read once sort of thing, I'm not up for reading more like this though. I did like the cover, hmm...

[Annie]

Dnf @ 23%

[Shannon Green-Kingery · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quirky collection of folktales like you have never read before!

[Danalli Calhoun · Rating 2 out of 5]

*shrug* I got bored halfway through.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was weird

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.68

[Dan Ust · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven and sometimes tough to read — not because of the body horror though that’s a factor for some. When the stories are good, they’re very good, but a few were just not quick reads.

[SqueakyChu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fun book of stories of varying length, some even super short, for people who enjoy going a step beyond tame fairy tales into the absurd. The results of the author’s creative story-telling are intriguing scenarios and captivating, strange tales. It is as if Hans Christian Anderson, Jonathan Lethem, and Edgar Alan Poe all got together for a long weekend and were told collaborate on writing short stories about women and girls. Imagine that weirdness. It’s all here in Bakaskovits’ book of short stories!

I found the longer stories in this collection the most interesting and wonder what kind of full size novel this talented author could create. Since I love “weird”, I would be eager to find out.

I will admit that a few of these stories grossed me out, but I applaud the author being brave enough to tackle them. Some of the stories had similar endings which I found a bit disappointing, but I loved how the author’s imagination came alive in all of them. I also love the pink-beaked blackbird named Gizmo in the last story. I sure would not mind having such a bird as my friend.

[Lindsay Stenico · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this fractured fairy tale collection, there are 21 short stories that promise to be dark, morbid, gory, and down right spooky, making it to be a perfect - dare I even say "cozy" - read in the time leading up to Halloween. My personal favorite was "A Tale of Two Adoptions" that felt sweeter and different from the rest. Highly recommend for those who like to read about the strange and creepy.