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Burning Girls and Other Stories
When we came to America, we brought anger and socialism and hunger. We also brought our demons.
“One of the most powerful voices in speculative fiction.”—Catherynne M. Valente
In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.
Emma Goldman--yes, that Emma Goldman--takes tea with Baba Yaga and truths unfold inside of exquisitely crafted lies. In "Among the Thorns," a young woman in seventeenth century Germany is intent on avenging the brutal murder of her peddler father, but discovers that vengeance may consume all that it touches. In the showstopping, awards-finalist title story, "Burning Girls," Schanoes invests the immigrant narrative with a fearsome fairytale quality that tells a story about America that we may not want--but need--to hear.
Dreamy, dangerous, and precise, with the weight of the very oldest tales we tell, Burning Girls and Other Stories introduces a writer pushing the boundaries of both fantasy and contemporary fiction.
With a foreword by Jane Yolen
Among the thorns
How to bring someone back from the dead
Alice : a fantasia
Phosphorous
Ballroom blitz
Serpents
Emma Goldman takes tea with the Baba Yaga
Rats
Lost in the supermarket
Swimming
Lily Glass
The revenant
Burning girls
“One of the most powerful voices in speculative fiction.”—Catherynne M. Valente
In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.
Emma Goldman--yes, that Emma Goldman--takes tea with Baba Yaga and truths unfold inside of exquisitely crafted lies. In "Among the Thorns," a young woman in seventeenth century Germany is intent on avenging the brutal murder of her peddler father, but discovers that vengeance may consume all that it touches. In the showstopping, awards-finalist title story, "Burning Girls," Schanoes invests the immigrant narrative with a fearsome fairytale quality that tells a story about America that we may not want--but need--to hear.
Dreamy, dangerous, and precise, with the weight of the very oldest tales we tell, Burning Girls and Other Stories introduces a writer pushing the boundaries of both fantasy and contemporary fiction.
With a foreword by Jane Yolen
Among the thorns
How to bring someone back from the dead
Alice : a fantasia
Phosphorous
Ballroom blitz
Serpents
Emma Goldman takes tea with the Baba Yaga
Rats
Lost in the supermarket
Swimming
Lily Glass
The revenant
Burning girls
336 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2021
80 people are currently reading
5516 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 182 reviews
January 18, 2021
Two of these stories were so brilliant and perfect I wanted to marry them. Two were so confusing I wanted someone to explain them to me. The rest were quite good. So a bit hit-or-miss but the hits are so good it makes reading it all.
January 22, 2021
This was a really delightful book of speculative, experimental short stories. I think some of the stories are more successful than others, but overall, I was entertained and engaged throughout, even if I didn't end up loving a given story. I will say that I think the first story in the collection, "Among the Thorns," is a true stand out, but I also really enjoyed the titular story and a story about a never ending house construction project. If you're looking a collection of speculative short stories that have heavy doses of Jewish magic & feminist themes, with a dollop of queer elements, this is for you!
March 31, 2021
There is no narrative causality, there is no foreshadowing, no narrative tone or subtly tuned metaphor to warn us about what is coming. And when someone dies it is not tragic, not inevitably brought on as a fitting end, not a fabulous disaster. It is stupid. And it hurts.
I ate these stories right up. Weirdly, the only one I didn’t love was the title story. Anyway, this was a very inventive collection full of vivid imagery and interesting metaphors and use of language. The stories are fictional and pull from history, religion (Judaism most) and play with fantasy/magical realism. I haven’t read anything like this, I’d recommend it.
I ate these stories right up. Weirdly, the only one I didn’t love was the title story. Anyway, this was a very inventive collection full of vivid imagery and interesting metaphors and use of language. The stories are fictional and pull from history, religion (Judaism most) and play with fantasy/magical realism. I haven’t read anything like this, I’d recommend it.
January 8, 2022
The stories in this book attack antisemitism, cruelty capitalism, homophobia, and commodifying and monetizing pain, but woven into folktale and fantasy with amazing artistry. There's no simple good vs evil dichotomy in these stories - the evil is there, but the good is always problematic and none of us is innocent. In the words of the meta-narrator of the story "Emma Goldman Takes Tea With the Baba Yaga":
The terrific intro to this book, written by Jane Yolen, is titled "A Witch for Our Times", and I can't think of a better description for the author of these tentacled stories and what they did to me. The writing is often almost disarming in its clarity and warmth - it tricked me into reading stories that went to painful places I'd rather not go, but how could I not follow that language? I learned from the intro that Schanoes is a scholar of folklore and fairy tales, and that explains the complex way she mines them (a mining I barely understand - I wish I could take one of her classes!) but not the artistry of her writing - I guess that's where the witchery comes in!
My absolute must-read stories in this collection are 'Among the Thorns', 'Burning Girls', 'Phosphorus', 'Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga' and 'Rats'. I haven't read 'Ballroom Blitz' or 'The Revenant' yet, but I might be updating my review to include them too.
To give a hint of how deeply and how precisely the author can cut, I'll end with the final sentence of the story 'Rats', which is a fictionalized window into the tragic life and death of punk rockers, Sid and Nancy and their posthumous exploitation:
Where do those who walk away from Omelas go? There's nowhere to go, nowhere moral, nowhere safe, nowhere that does not depend on the suffering of some child.
The terrific intro to this book, written by Jane Yolen, is titled "A Witch for Our Times", and I can't think of a better description for the author of these tentacled stories and what they did to me. The writing is often almost disarming in its clarity and warmth - it tricked me into reading stories that went to painful places I'd rather not go, but how could I not follow that language? I learned from the intro that Schanoes is a scholar of folklore and fairy tales, and that explains the complex way she mines them (a mining I barely understand - I wish I could take one of her classes!) but not the artistry of her writing - I guess that's where the witchery comes in!
My absolute must-read stories in this collection are 'Among the Thorns', 'Burning Girls', 'Phosphorus', 'Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga' and 'Rats'. I haven't read 'Ballroom Blitz' or 'The Revenant' yet, but I might be updating my review to include them too.
To give a hint of how deeply and how precisely the author can cut, I'll end with the final sentence of the story 'Rats', which is a fictionalized window into the tragic life and death of punk rockers, Sid and Nancy and their posthumous exploitation:
Death has no narrative arc and no dignity, and now you can silkscreen these two kids' pictures on your fucking T-shirt.
November 19, 2020
First of all, I might as well state my biases. This is a feminist short story collection with queer flavor, and I’m a queer feminist. So, there. Feminist spins on fairy tales, mental illness, worker's rights, immigration and Jewish folklore as well as Jewish persecution throughout the centuries form a cohesive foundation here; these are threads that weave through the entire collection, like trails of breadcrumbs for the reader to follow through each story. Another bias: I have Jewish heritage, but grew up outside any sort of Jewish community, so the folklore elements are really intriguing to me.
With all this in mind, while I do think that I got extra enjoyment out of some of the stories specifically because of these biases, this is a short story collection that I think anyone who wants a good read should pick up once it’s released (March 2021).
This collection starts off incredibly strong with “Among the Thorns”, Schanoes’ follow-up and response to The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale “The Jew Among Thorns”, wherein the titular Jew’s daughter sets out to avenge her father’s gruesome death at the hands of gentiles. Considering the stark antisemitism that permeates the original story (as well as others found in the Grimm oeuvre), “Among the Thorns” makes for not only a captivating tale of revenge, but a powerful reclamation of the narrative as a whole.
Having been utterly enthralled by this first story, the following two stories, “How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead” and “Alice: a Fantasia” have a tough act to follow, and they didn’t resonate quite as well with me. But they are both very short, and so do not overstay their welcome. This is something that I felt rang true for a lot of the shortest stories in this collection – like they were deeply weird momentary glances into some trauma or other, momentary lapses of sanity, their narratives often oblique in nature. Like maybe I’m not meant to understand them fully, because they weren’t written for me… which is okay, because the longer stories definitely were. All of the stories in this collection are gorgeously written, though, so I still found enjoyment in the shorter ones, despite not feeling as connected to them emotionally. Schanoes shines stylistically – an Associate Professor of English, she certainly knows what she’s doing from choice of words to formatting, and it shows.
In “Phosphorous”, one of the longer stories, we get kind of a horror take on historical events – we follow poor, young matchstick girls suffering from phosphorous necrosis who attempt to unionize for better working conditions and a living wage. The vibe is, of course, very socialist, and Marx is quoted. It’s a harrowing tale of poor people slavery and the human cost of industrialization and capitalism. There are actual horror elements in here, but they take a backseat to the horror that is laissez-faire capitalism. Ten out of ten, comrade.
The theme of the plight of the working class is of course also present in “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga”, in which we see the legendary political activist Goldman, disillusioned and burdened by years of struggles and betrayed by her own revolution, sit down with the equally legendary witch of the woods. Half of it reads as a history lecture, the other as a fairy tale, and both are equally interesting. I loved the concept, and I loved learning more about Goldman from a different point of view, through a magical lens. Also, since it’s rare that “older” women (middle-aged and up) get to be the main characters in stories, this story gets brownie points for featuring an “older” Emma.
And, of course, while on the theme of worker's rights... “Burning Girls”, which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2013, closes out the collection in style. Here, too, the story is thick with Jewish folklore and mysticism, explores Jewish persecution, pogroms and immigration, and I was completely transported by it. Its complex and cursed characters became very tangible for me, and at the end of the story, I wanted to reach through the pages and hold these women’s hands through everything befell them, much the same as I felt with the main characters of “Phosphorous” and “Among the Thorns”.
Now, I have to give special recognition to the stories that broke me the most: “Rats” and “The Revenant”.
“Rats” is a brilliant retelling of the doomed life of, and romance between, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. That’s not all it is, though. It’s also a meticulous and harsh examination of how we as a society tend to romanticize destructive relationships, mental illness, self-harm and substance abuse, to the point where we, over 40 years later, wear the faces of those who died too young on our t-shirts. Sid and Nancy were just children of parents who lost them way too soon, but in death, they have become icons, their fate portrayed as somehow darkly romantic by profit-driven companies who commodify their tragic deaths. Neither of them got the help they needed in life, and the saddest part is of course that thousands upon thousands of Sids and Nancys are out there right now, suffering, hurting themselves or others and receiving no help. Of course, their eventual tragic ends won’t be commodified, but they won’t be any less tragic for happening outside of the public eye.
So, finally, “The Revenant”. I don’t know where to begin with this story. It tore me in half, but it stitched me together again at the end, because this is a revenge story that left me feeling somewhat personally vindicated.
It is, tragically, a tale as old as time: a young girl, naive to the ways of the world, is taken advantage of by an older man. The young girl is cast aside, broken, having lost her innocence, having to live with her trauma for the rest of her life. The older man moves on basically the second he walks away from her, going home to his family, because in the end, she was nothing but warm meat to a predator like him. We know this story. Perhaps we’ve lived it.
But here is where the magical element shakes things up. The broken girl, now a damaged but outwardly functioning grown woman, resurrects a revenant – the ghost of the girl she was, the girl who died a long time ago in the older man’s embrace – and this revenant emerges with a terrifying and bloody purpose...
Listen. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve fantasized about what I would do to my own predators, my aggressors, my rapists? Maybe you do, if you’ve ever lived through an assault. Then you will truly understand how gratifying it is to read someone else’s revenge fantasy, seeing it play out, basking in the glory of it all. And this dreamed up, horrible violence, blood for blood, might not heal the trauma. Maybe nothing ever will. But there is something in me, too, an ugly and twisted but justified shadow self which cannot help but rejoice at revenge as sweet as this… leaving them violated, broken and traumatized in return. And this story touched that part of me, deeply.
This collection stands out to me, because while I’ve read similarly feminist tales, none of them have had the strong focus on Jewish history and folklore that I found here. That sets it apart for me, and having read it, I’m more excited than ever to learn more about my heritage and my roots. That’s a huge plus. And I’m equally as excited to read whatever Schanoes writes next.
Huge thanks to the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review!
With all this in mind, while I do think that I got extra enjoyment out of some of the stories specifically because of these biases, this is a short story collection that I think anyone who wants a good read should pick up once it’s released (March 2021).
This collection starts off incredibly strong with “Among the Thorns”, Schanoes’ follow-up and response to The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale “The Jew Among Thorns”, wherein the titular Jew’s daughter sets out to avenge her father’s gruesome death at the hands of gentiles. Considering the stark antisemitism that permeates the original story (as well as others found in the Grimm oeuvre), “Among the Thorns” makes for not only a captivating tale of revenge, but a powerful reclamation of the narrative as a whole.
Having been utterly enthralled by this first story, the following two stories, “How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead” and “Alice: a Fantasia” have a tough act to follow, and they didn’t resonate quite as well with me. But they are both very short, and so do not overstay their welcome. This is something that I felt rang true for a lot of the shortest stories in this collection – like they were deeply weird momentary glances into some trauma or other, momentary lapses of sanity, their narratives often oblique in nature. Like maybe I’m not meant to understand them fully, because they weren’t written for me… which is okay, because the longer stories definitely were. All of the stories in this collection are gorgeously written, though, so I still found enjoyment in the shorter ones, despite not feeling as connected to them emotionally. Schanoes shines stylistically – an Associate Professor of English, she certainly knows what she’s doing from choice of words to formatting, and it shows.
In “Phosphorous”, one of the longer stories, we get kind of a horror take on historical events – we follow poor, young matchstick girls suffering from phosphorous necrosis who attempt to unionize for better working conditions and a living wage. The vibe is, of course, very socialist, and Marx is quoted. It’s a harrowing tale of poor people slavery and the human cost of industrialization and capitalism. There are actual horror elements in here, but they take a backseat to the horror that is laissez-faire capitalism. Ten out of ten, comrade.
The theme of the plight of the working class is of course also present in “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga”, in which we see the legendary political activist Goldman, disillusioned and burdened by years of struggles and betrayed by her own revolution, sit down with the equally legendary witch of the woods. Half of it reads as a history lecture, the other as a fairy tale, and both are equally interesting. I loved the concept, and I loved learning more about Goldman from a different point of view, through a magical lens. Also, since it’s rare that “older” women (middle-aged and up) get to be the main characters in stories, this story gets brownie points for featuring an “older” Emma.
And, of course, while on the theme of worker's rights... “Burning Girls”, which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2013, closes out the collection in style. Here, too, the story is thick with Jewish folklore and mysticism, explores Jewish persecution, pogroms and immigration, and I was completely transported by it. Its complex and cursed characters became very tangible for me, and at the end of the story, I wanted to reach through the pages and hold these women’s hands through everything befell them, much the same as I felt with the main characters of “Phosphorous” and “Among the Thorns”.
Now, I have to give special recognition to the stories that broke me the most: “Rats” and “The Revenant”.
“Rats” is a brilliant retelling of the doomed life of, and romance between, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. That’s not all it is, though. It’s also a meticulous and harsh examination of how we as a society tend to romanticize destructive relationships, mental illness, self-harm and substance abuse, to the point where we, over 40 years later, wear the faces of those who died too young on our t-shirts. Sid and Nancy were just children of parents who lost them way too soon, but in death, they have become icons, their fate portrayed as somehow darkly romantic by profit-driven companies who commodify their tragic deaths. Neither of them got the help they needed in life, and the saddest part is of course that thousands upon thousands of Sids and Nancys are out there right now, suffering, hurting themselves or others and receiving no help. Of course, their eventual tragic ends won’t be commodified, but they won’t be any less tragic for happening outside of the public eye.
So, finally, “The Revenant”. I don’t know where to begin with this story. It tore me in half, but it stitched me together again at the end, because this is a revenge story that left me feeling somewhat personally vindicated.
It is, tragically, a tale as old as time: a young girl, naive to the ways of the world, is taken advantage of by an older man. The young girl is cast aside, broken, having lost her innocence, having to live with her trauma for the rest of her life. The older man moves on basically the second he walks away from her, going home to his family, because in the end, she was nothing but warm meat to a predator like him. We know this story. Perhaps we’ve lived it.
But here is where the magical element shakes things up. The broken girl, now a damaged but outwardly functioning grown woman, resurrects a revenant – the ghost of the girl she was, the girl who died a long time ago in the older man’s embrace – and this revenant emerges with a terrifying and bloody purpose...
Listen. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve fantasized about what I would do to my own predators, my aggressors, my rapists? Maybe you do, if you’ve ever lived through an assault. Then you will truly understand how gratifying it is to read someone else’s revenge fantasy, seeing it play out, basking in the glory of it all. And this dreamed up, horrible violence, blood for blood, might not heal the trauma. Maybe nothing ever will. But there is something in me, too, an ugly and twisted but justified shadow self which cannot help but rejoice at revenge as sweet as this… leaving them violated, broken and traumatized in return. And this story touched that part of me, deeply.
This collection stands out to me, because while I’ve read similarly feminist tales, none of them have had the strong focus on Jewish history and folklore that I found here. That sets it apart for me, and having read it, I’m more excited than ever to learn more about my heritage and my roots. That’s a huge plus. And I’m equally as excited to read whatever Schanoes writes next.
Huge thanks to the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review!
March 6, 2021
Average Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️.8
I knew nothing about the author or this collection itself when I requested an arc of this book. All I saw was that stunning cover and title, and I knew I wanted to read it. And it didn’t disappoint. While there were a couple of misses, this is a beautifully written collection of stories about women - resilient women who have to find the strength within themselves to overcome very harsh circumstances - they might not always succeed but they never give up. The writing itself has a very fairytale-esque feel to it and it made the whole experience quite magical but also horrific at times. Definitely worth a read if you enjoy short stories with feminist fairytale themes and lots of Jewish religious and cultural elements.
Among the Thorns
Featuring a mother goddess and young girl full of grief, this is a story about antisemitic violence across centuries, how it has affected so many families, and what might happen if someone decides to take revenge. This is also the tale of a mother's love and her abundant capacity for compassion, even in dire circumstances.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead
This was too short for me to form a concrete opinion about it. But its about what lengths you will go to for the one you love and while its an interesting theme, the story didn't live up to it.
⭐️⭐️
Alice: A Fantasia
This seems like some kind of a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but the second half was very confusing after a fascinating first half.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Phosphorus
Set against the backdrop of unskilled workers strikes for better wages and working conditions during 19th century London, this is a poignant tale of resilient women doing everything they can to survive their brutal circumstances and unimaginable suffering.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ballroom Blitz
CW: gore, depression, self harm
Another story where I might not have completely understood the point, but the depiction of rage, despair, helplessness and depression through the writing was very on point.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Serpents
This was quite frankly very weird because I am terrified of snakes and this story was full of very vivid descriptions of snakes as well as other creatures.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga
An excellent mix of history, politics and fairytale - this is a story about the promise of revolution; particularly the Bolshevik revolution; but how ultimately it turned on its own principles and its people, becoming a dictatorship that oppressed everyone. Despite the hopeless tone of the story, it’s also a call to remember that revolutions may not be kind, but the present regimes are equally cruel.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Rats
CW: body horror, self harm, drug use, mental health issues
This was a difficult read and the story was very bleak, but it’s also about the futility of self harm and how so many young teenagers across the world are dealing with drug abuse and mental health issues, and how they need more support instead of recriminations.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Lost in the Supermarket
CW: animal mutilation
Ironically, I was also lost in this story and not in a good way. It was interesting to read but I just couldn’t figure out what it was meant to signify. Or atleast the bit that clicked for me was about how our supermarket aisles are filled with varieties of every item and some of us find it hard to even choose, but there are so many others who still go hungry. Vividly written but probably it just wasn’t for me. The numerous pop culture references (which I had no clue about) didnt help either.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Swimming
This was another weird story but I have to give it to the author, the descriptions here were very impressive and amusingly grotesque. And I think I understood the idea of losing ourselves so much in our ambition to achieve something, that we forget why we started out in the first place and that’s why it’s important to keep our feet on the ground always.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Lily Glass
The story of two young women trying to find their identity and come into their own, this was beautiful, emotional and bittersweer.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Revenant
CW: child abuse
This was another difficult read and the author truly captures the loneliness and troubles of a young girl who just needs someone to listen to her but life isn’t fair. The author explores trauma in a speculative manner and I thought it was very well written.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Burning Girls
The author ends this collection with another story that sets off against the backdrop of antisemitic violence, which forces two young sisters to move to the New World, and fight both human and supernatural demons in their struggle for survival. It is exquisitely written, full of emotion and wonder and pain and I can’t think of a better conclusion or titular story.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I knew nothing about the author or this collection itself when I requested an arc of this book. All I saw was that stunning cover and title, and I knew I wanted to read it. And it didn’t disappoint. While there were a couple of misses, this is a beautifully written collection of stories about women - resilient women who have to find the strength within themselves to overcome very harsh circumstances - they might not always succeed but they never give up. The writing itself has a very fairytale-esque feel to it and it made the whole experience quite magical but also horrific at times. Definitely worth a read if you enjoy short stories with feminist fairytale themes and lots of Jewish religious and cultural elements.
Among the Thorns
Featuring a mother goddess and young girl full of grief, this is a story about antisemitic violence across centuries, how it has affected so many families, and what might happen if someone decides to take revenge. This is also the tale of a mother's love and her abundant capacity for compassion, even in dire circumstances.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead
This was too short for me to form a concrete opinion about it. But its about what lengths you will go to for the one you love and while its an interesting theme, the story didn't live up to it.
⭐️⭐️
Alice: A Fantasia
This seems like some kind of a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but the second half was very confusing after a fascinating first half.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Phosphorus
Set against the backdrop of unskilled workers strikes for better wages and working conditions during 19th century London, this is a poignant tale of resilient women doing everything they can to survive their brutal circumstances and unimaginable suffering.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ballroom Blitz
CW: gore, depression, self harm
Another story where I might not have completely understood the point, but the depiction of rage, despair, helplessness and depression through the writing was very on point.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Serpents
This was quite frankly very weird because I am terrified of snakes and this story was full of very vivid descriptions of snakes as well as other creatures.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga
An excellent mix of history, politics and fairytale - this is a story about the promise of revolution; particularly the Bolshevik revolution; but how ultimately it turned on its own principles and its people, becoming a dictatorship that oppressed everyone. Despite the hopeless tone of the story, it’s also a call to remember that revolutions may not be kind, but the present regimes are equally cruel.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Rats
CW: body horror, self harm, drug use, mental health issues
This was a difficult read and the story was very bleak, but it’s also about the futility of self harm and how so many young teenagers across the world are dealing with drug abuse and mental health issues, and how they need more support instead of recriminations.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Lost in the Supermarket
CW: animal mutilation
Ironically, I was also lost in this story and not in a good way. It was interesting to read but I just couldn’t figure out what it was meant to signify. Or atleast the bit that clicked for me was about how our supermarket aisles are filled with varieties of every item and some of us find it hard to even choose, but there are so many others who still go hungry. Vividly written but probably it just wasn’t for me. The numerous pop culture references (which I had no clue about) didnt help either.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Swimming
This was another weird story but I have to give it to the author, the descriptions here were very impressive and amusingly grotesque. And I think I understood the idea of losing ourselves so much in our ambition to achieve something, that we forget why we started out in the first place and that’s why it’s important to keep our feet on the ground always.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Lily Glass
The story of two young women trying to find their identity and come into their own, this was beautiful, emotional and bittersweer.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Revenant
CW: child abuse
This was another difficult read and the author truly captures the loneliness and troubles of a young girl who just needs someone to listen to her but life isn’t fair. The author explores trauma in a speculative manner and I thought it was very well written.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Burning Girls
The author ends this collection with another story that sets off against the backdrop of antisemitic violence, which forces two young sisters to move to the New World, and fight both human and supernatural demons in their struggle for survival. It is exquisitely written, full of emotion and wonder and pain and I can’t think of a better conclusion or titular story.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Want to read
October 22, 2020I requested this from Netgalley because I've read a few of this lady's stories and she is wickedly dark and twisty and delightful.
Please dear netgalley, grant my request
Please dear netgalley, grant my request
November 19, 2020
I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley.
Veronica Schanoes's new collection from Tor includes an incredible breadth of work across a span of time and fantasy. The voices that she evokes are mesmerizing, intense, and memorable. I had read two of the included works before: "Phosphorous" and "Burning Girls," both being historical fantasy with resilient female immigrants and an exploration of socialism and corporate injustice. Those two stories alone are well worth the price of this book.
Every story in the collection is taut and well-written, but the historical fiction works are the ones I really enjoyed. "Among the Thorns" is just plain devastating. "Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga" is an intriguing twist on the Baba Yaga mythology. "Phosphorous" and "Burning Girls" I'll mention again, because wow. They epitomize what I feel historical fantasy should be: deep and educational, and enjoyable, too. The other stories in the book were just a bit weird for my personal taste, but that's okay. I loved the book nevertheless because when Schanoes's stories resonated with me, they resonated hard.
This book will be released in March 2021.
Veronica Schanoes's new collection from Tor includes an incredible breadth of work across a span of time and fantasy. The voices that she evokes are mesmerizing, intense, and memorable. I had read two of the included works before: "Phosphorous" and "Burning Girls," both being historical fantasy with resilient female immigrants and an exploration of socialism and corporate injustice. Those two stories alone are well worth the price of this book.
Every story in the collection is taut and well-written, but the historical fiction works are the ones I really enjoyed. "Among the Thorns" is just plain devastating. "Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga" is an intriguing twist on the Baba Yaga mythology. "Phosphorous" and "Burning Girls" I'll mention again, because wow. They epitomize what I feel historical fantasy should be: deep and educational, and enjoyable, too. The other stories in the book were just a bit weird for my personal taste, but that's okay. I loved the book nevertheless because when Schanoes's stories resonated with me, they resonated hard.
This book will be released in March 2021.
November 30, 2020
loved every single story in this
November 20, 2023
Veronica Schanoes' stories are in two modes: half the stories in this book are what I would call contemporary atmospheric horror, a genre Schanoes is extremely skilled at. Kelly Link, Rachel Swirsky and Carmen Maria Machado all write brilliantly in this mode as well) I admire this kind of story, and I can get caught up in it, but I generally don't deeply care about it. The exception here is "The Revenant," a deeply feminist, deeply human story where Schanoes brilliantly weaves autobiography with (maybe?) fiction, and I found it unforgettable.
The other mode is expressly, unabashedly political: stories about injustice faced and sometimes redeemed. Other than "The Revenant," the three standout stories all sear themselves into the reader's mind. "Phossy," an inside view of the phosphorus-damaged young women working in the match factories in 19th century Enland, is a tour-de-force of medical and political horror. "Among the Thorns" and "Burning Girls" are both very Jewish stories. Judaism is underexplored in contemporary speculative fiction, and Schanoes' scholarship is almost as impressive as her insights in this realm. IN one story, we travel with a young woman on a quest to avenge her .father's grossly anti-Semitic murder in the 19th century. n the other, we shadow another young woman learning Jewish healer/witch skills and follow her and her sister from Eastern Europe to New York City, Both times, Schanoes draws us all the way in to the terror, the pain, the anger, and the joy.
Not for the faint of heart (or faint of stomach), but if historical realism woven with well-crafted fantasy is your jam, Schanoes is here to burn a hole in your heart.
The other mode is expressly, unabashedly political: stories about injustice faced and sometimes redeemed. Other than "The Revenant," the three standout stories all sear themselves into the reader's mind. "Phossy," an inside view of the phosphorus-damaged young women working in the match factories in 19th century Enland, is a tour-de-force of medical and political horror. "Among the Thorns" and "Burning Girls" are both very Jewish stories. Judaism is underexplored in contemporary speculative fiction, and Schanoes' scholarship is almost as impressive as her insights in this realm. IN one story, we travel with a young woman on a quest to avenge her .father's grossly anti-Semitic murder in the 19th century. n the other, we shadow another young woman learning Jewish healer/witch skills and follow her and her sister from Eastern Europe to New York City, Both times, Schanoes draws us all the way in to the terror, the pain, the anger, and the joy.
Not for the faint of heart (or faint of stomach), but if historical realism woven with well-crafted fantasy is your jam, Schanoes is here to burn a hole in your heart.
August 12, 2020
Intense and oh so good.
February 27, 2021
3 stars *may change
TW: self-harm, death, antisemitism
I'm a big fan of short stories-and by that I mean I like reading books under 200 pages so I can complete my reading goal quicker. This isn't technically that, but it is an anthology with multiple short stories telling of different characters going through different depressing scenarios.
I don't think it needs to be said that, obviously, some shorts are better than others. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an anthology that has a completely perfect selection of tales. That being said, I did quite enjoy some of them as well.
There was one (I'm not even going to try to name the stories because I was listening to the audiobook and I have no idea what their names are) told in the second point of view, and /man/ was that hard to listen to. It just reminded me of reading Wattpad y/n self-insert fanfiction. that's not exactly the author's fault, I just think all second POV stories are horrendous. There was another one where I can't even name a detail from it to tell it apart because I thought it was so dull. The writing in this book is lovely-captivatingly so. But sometimes it just speaks without really saying anything.
On the other hand, the stories of the 101 nights and the burning girls (cue title sequence) were the most captivating to me. I think the author's writing style really came out in them in a way that didn't show in some of the other ones.
This is a Jewish own-voices novel which, while having multiple themes throughout, always seems to be handling something dark. Antisemitism plays an important role in multiple stories and influences decisions even in the ones where it's not the main focus. Similarly, it also deals with death, self-harm, depression and mental illness, involuntary hospitalization, etc etc. I think these darker themes were handled with care and precision alongside the flow of the writing style and its poetic nature. It's not a nice story to read about by any means, but the horrificness of it truly shines along with the way its written.
I think it was a lovely audiobook and anthology, although it did reach too far at some points where I think the prose was more of decoration than actual importance. Nice either way.
Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy.
TW: self-harm, death, antisemitism
I'm a big fan of short stories-and by that I mean I like reading books under 200 pages so I can complete my reading goal quicker. This isn't technically that, but it is an anthology with multiple short stories telling of different characters going through different depressing scenarios.
I don't think it needs to be said that, obviously, some shorts are better than others. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an anthology that has a completely perfect selection of tales. That being said, I did quite enjoy some of them as well.
There was one (I'm not even going to try to name the stories because I was listening to the audiobook and I have no idea what their names are) told in the second point of view, and /man/ was that hard to listen to. It just reminded me of reading Wattpad y/n self-insert fanfiction. that's not exactly the author's fault, I just think all second POV stories are horrendous. There was another one where I can't even name a detail from it to tell it apart because I thought it was so dull. The writing in this book is lovely-captivatingly so. But sometimes it just speaks without really saying anything.
On the other hand, the stories of the 101 nights and the burning girls (cue title sequence) were the most captivating to me. I think the author's writing style really came out in them in a way that didn't show in some of the other ones.
This is a Jewish own-voices novel which, while having multiple themes throughout, always seems to be handling something dark. Antisemitism plays an important role in multiple stories and influences decisions even in the ones where it's not the main focus. Similarly, it also deals with death, self-harm, depression and mental illness, involuntary hospitalization, etc etc. I think these darker themes were handled with care and precision alongside the flow of the writing style and its poetic nature. It's not a nice story to read about by any means, but the horrificness of it truly shines along with the way its written.
I think it was a lovely audiobook and anthology, although it did reach too far at some points where I think the prose was more of decoration than actual importance. Nice either way.
Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy.
June 15, 2024
Best read one at a time to savor them.
February 23, 2021
This interesting collection comprises retellings not just of popular fairy tales or folklore but also of lives of pop culture icons, with a dark and/or fantastical twist. The name of the original tale/person isn't always revealed at the start so you can only guess what it could be as the story progresses. The stories are all from speculative fiction or dark fantasy.
In most anthologies, the stories fall in three categories. Most stories would be fantastic or average, with just a few being really bad. In this anthology though, the second category is missing. So the stories either really hit the mark or they go completely off tangent, leaving us confused.
Of the 13 stories, I really enjoyed Among the Thorns, Ballroom Blitz, Lily Glass, Rats, Swimming, The Revenant, and the title story. That makes it 7/13. Some of the remaining stories begin well but soon become too twisted for my liking. Maybe those who enjoy much darker or gory stories will enjoy that too. I think this indicates my shortcoming as a reader than a problem with the story itself as I don't enjoy excessive animal abuse or child abuse in my reading.
The writing though is absolutely gripping. Veronica Schanoes seems to have a firm grip on the language and she knows how to keep the momentum going. No story seems slow-paced.
The narrator, Cassandra Campbell, does justice to the audiobook. Her enunciation is wonderful, and her voice clear.
Thank you, NetGalley and Tantor Audio, for the Advanced Audio Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever! , for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
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In most anthologies, the stories fall in three categories. Most stories would be fantastic or average, with just a few being really bad. In this anthology though, the second category is missing. So the stories either really hit the mark or they go completely off tangent, leaving us confused.
Of the 13 stories, I really enjoyed Among the Thorns, Ballroom Blitz, Lily Glass, Rats, Swimming, The Revenant, and the title story. That makes it 7/13. Some of the remaining stories begin well but soon become too twisted for my liking. Maybe those who enjoy much darker or gory stories will enjoy that too. I think this indicates my shortcoming as a reader than a problem with the story itself as I don't enjoy excessive animal abuse or child abuse in my reading.
The writing though is absolutely gripping. Veronica Schanoes seems to have a firm grip on the language and she knows how to keep the momentum going. No story seems slow-paced.
The narrator, Cassandra Campbell, does justice to the audiobook. Her enunciation is wonderful, and her voice clear.
Thank you, NetGalley and Tantor Audio, for the Advanced Audio Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever! , for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
Follow me on Instagram: RoshReviews
January 19, 2024
That might be one of the best short story collections I've read. While reading, I was enamoured with how Schanoes manages to blend fairy tale, fantasy and folklore with a variety of historical and contemporary setting. There was not a single story I didn't like but the ones I remember the most are Phosphorus, Serpents, Among the Thorns, Rats and Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga. Schanos' prose and storytelling are amazing and show great control over her craft. It's obvious when writers who play with fairytale elements don't actually read fairytales or folktales, and she obviously isn't one of them. From the way she uses both the more whimsical style of a fairy tale with a more cynical, matter of fact prose (the best example of that is her style switching in the Emma Goldman story) it is clear that she reads children's and adult literature alike.
September 11, 2021
4.5 stars.
have you ever read a book and just been in awe of the writer’s talent? well, this book did that for me. veronica schanoes is phenomenal at retelling myths and fairy tales, bending them to her will in the most exciting ways. so fucking clever. i loved this collection. also her writing practically sings off the page and the stories emerge like the hydra; an amalgamation of the dark, the sinister, and the magical.
favourite stories include: among the thorns/how to bring someone back from the dead/phosphorus/serpents/rats/swimming/the revenant/burning girls
have you ever read a book and just been in awe of the writer’s talent? well, this book did that for me. veronica schanoes is phenomenal at retelling myths and fairy tales, bending them to her will in the most exciting ways. so fucking clever. i loved this collection. also her writing practically sings off the page and the stories emerge like the hydra; an amalgamation of the dark, the sinister, and the magical.
favourite stories include: among the thorns/how to bring someone back from the dead/phosphorus/serpents/rats/swimming/the revenant/burning girls
April 4, 2021
DNF 30%
Unfortunately this wasn’t for me at all. I was so interested in the subject matter of these stories! The writing and the storytelling style were SO DISAPPOINTING! It was like reading something written by a robot. All the sentences’ structures almost identical. Just a procession of facts one after the other. No setting descriptions, no characterization, emotional imagery.
Unfortunately this wasn’t for me at all. I was so interested in the subject matter of these stories! The writing and the storytelling style were SO DISAPPOINTING! It was like reading something written by a robot. All the sentences’ structures almost identical. Just a procession of facts one after the other. No setting descriptions, no characterization, emotional imagery.
April 26, 2022
experimental, unconventional- i loved it. haunting as well.
February 18, 2021
I recieved this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Although I have liked several of these stories at the time, I think I will not remember them all. But I do have to say that the first and last were my favorites and I will remember them fondly.
We can see how the Jewish people have suffered just because they are Jews, I liked the fact that this is not written with hatred, it has been written intelligently so that we can sympathize with the characters and love them for being like are.
The issue of discrimination is very big and here it shows us how unjustified hatred can lead to misfortune. We all have good and bad things, nobody is perfect.
Although I have liked several of these stories at the time, I think I will not remember them all. But I do have to say that the first and last were my favorites and I will remember them fondly.
We can see how the Jewish people have suffered just because they are Jews, I liked the fact that this is not written with hatred, it has been written intelligently so that we can sympathize with the characters and love them for being like are.
The issue of discrimination is very big and here it shows us how unjustified hatred can lead to misfortune. We all have good and bad things, nobody is perfect.
Read
August 25, 2024This is a hard collection to rate because I found many of these stories baffling and I don't feel like I really got or enjoyed them. But the first story was such a powerhouse, and there were some other really strong stories within here too. I think that this collection will stick with me because of the good ones I read, so I will think back on this collection fondly.
Read
June 16, 2024Veronica Schanoes is an exceptionally skilled writer; that much is obvious from her short-story collection. I respect her craftsmanship, despite the fact not all of the stories worked for me. She is above all a agenda-driven writer who does not shy away from brutality, either in the past or in the modern world. Her stories howl with anguish, demanding to know why we do not do better by our fellow human beings. Antisemitism, labor rights, sexual abuse, and mental illness feature prominently in her work.
The stories that worked best for me largely followed a traditional narrative structure and had historical elements, including Among the Thorns, Phosphorus, and Burning Girls. I also appreciated the punk-saturated Ballroom Blitz for its unflinching look at depression, and the weird-house tale Swimming, in which the experimental structure uniquely suited the story. Alice: A Fantasia, Serpents, and Lost in the Supermarket left me scratching my head. I was not always enamored of Schanoes's habit of inserting herself into her tales. They sometimes read like political essays rather than stories; Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga is the most prominent example.
Despite the weaknesses of some of the stories, I was enthralled enough with this collection's strongest moments to seek out more from this author in the future.
Reviews of the short stories:
Among the Thorns, 5/5. In 17th-century Germany, Itte loses her father to antisemitic violence and devotes her life to seeking revenge on the town where he was made to dance in thorns and then hanged.
I loved how Schanoes executed the slow burn of her tale, making space to show how Yakov's death affects his family as they live on without him. It makes the revenge story all the more affecting, and the unexpected compassion Itte finds within herself more poignant.
The writing was brutal, not shying away from centuries of cruelty toward Jews, but also lyrical and utterly compelling. The ending was perfect - not unjust, but tempered with mercy.
How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead, 4/5. A surreal, unsettling meditation on the mindset of a person who is about to lose a loved one. Schanoes weaves together imagery from the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, Snow White, and modern-day hospital rooms. She evokes the feelings of pain, numbness, and shocked detachment experienced by nearly everyone who lives long enough to lose someone they cherish. A painful listen, but weirdly compelling. The last sentence roots the story firmly in the finality of the real world.
Alice: A Fantasia, 2/5. I liked two-thirds of this, which speculated on how Alice Liddell and her sisters may have been affected by their controversial relationship with Lewis Carroll. Then the whole thing fell apart with a nonsensical rhyming-word fugue that went on for nearly 5 minutes. I think Schanoes was trying to emulate Carroll's wordplay (a la Jabberwocky) but it brought what was a promising story to a screeching, confusing halt.
Phosphorus, 5/5. Schanoes tells the story of an historic labor strike by putting readers into the shoes of a match-factory worker dying from "phossy jaw" in London in 1888. As their intolerable working conditions drive desperate women to strike, the protagonist's grandmother makes a heartrending sacrifice to allow her to live long enough to witness the outcome.
The story unflinchingly depicts human exploitation in pursuit of greater profits, condemning a system in which so many must suffer before the most modest of reforms are enacted.
Ballroom Blitz, 4.5/5. 12 brothers are cursed to live in a seedy punk club forever, after the eldest nearly kills a teen boy in a bar fight. They party hard all night and wake each morning to despair, with broken bodies and killer hangovers.
When Isabelle walks into the club with her 11 sisters, Jake sees their salvation. They must dance together for 101 nights to break the curse. Jake is so focused on what he needs from Isabelle, he doesn't wonder what brought her to the club or the cause of her frequent black moods.
A contemporary parable about learning to truly care for another person, as well as an unflinching look at struggling to function with a mental illness.
Serpents, 2/5. An updated little Red Riding Hood, in which Charlotte takes "the path of pins," falls down a rabbit hole into the NYC subway system, and finally arrives at grandma's house. Twisty and weird, with some effective urban imagery, but the ending made absolutely no sense.
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga, 3/5. Part historical essay, part fantasy story, and part personal meditation on leftist politics. After losing her beloved older sister and growing disillusioned with the Bolshevik revolution, Goldman considers a tempting offer from the fabled Russian witch. The story was most effective focusing on their meeting and Goldman's choice. I think Schanoes could have told her story entirely through the lens of fantasy without inserting her meta-perspective, which felt awkward.
Rats, 4/5. A fictionalized retelling of the heroin- and despair-fueled relationship of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen that offers a plausible explanation of how she died. Similar in theme to Ballroom Blitz but darker and more uncompromising. A savage critique of the romanticization and commodification of mental illness, drug addiction, and early death.
Lost in the Supermarket, 2/5. Schanoes really likes punk music and Alice in Wonderland. This is the third story to reference Alice and the third to use punk as a storytelling device . Like Serpents, it's vague and weird, and I'm not sure what point she was trying to make. The Queen of Hearts has trapped a young woman in an endless supermarket, and the ghost of Joe Strummer of the Clash comes to help her. The message seems to be to remain true to one's passions to achieve freedom, but it's shoehorned in at the very end.
Swimming, 4.5/5. An experimental story I really enjoyed, about a strange couple endlessly adding onto their behemoth of a house in increasingly weird ways. They have built a special floor for their son and his fiancé to live with them, but the prospective bride feels like she is drowning inside the house. She makes an escape plan. I interpreted the fantastical ending as a metaphor for a couple finding their own way in life, embracing their differences as well as similarities, and casting off family notions of how they should live.
Lily Glass, 4/5. Rose, who changes her name to Lily to become a Hollywood star, barely knows herself when she marries an aging playboy actor. Her life was first consumed by survival, growing up poor in a tenement, then by learning to change her looks and personality to fit the demands of film roles. She falls in love with her husband's daughter, who is two years younger than her, but her lack of knowledge of who she really is threatens to destroy her. A cautionary tale on the importance of personal identity as well as an indictment of the Hollywood system that chews up and spits out so many young stars.
The Revenant, 4/5. A story of the effects of trauma with an experimental structure that shifts between past and present and from first to third person. I was a little confused at the beginning. In middle age, a woman resurrects the part of herself she destroyed to survive sexual abuse. As a soon-to-be therapist, I loved the ending, which embraced how healing can take place.
Burning Girls, 5/5. A novella-length tale steeped in Jewish folk magic and tragedy, which follows a family from Poland to America in the early 1900s. It centers on Deborah, a worker of holy magic, who does her best to protect her loved ones with charms and spells. Twice, she must use her most powerful magic against a child-stealing demon, and each time, the magic exacts a terrible price. The story's title refers to the Polish pogroms against Jews - in America, Jews are not burned, Deborah's mother promises. But Deborah and her sister escape European antisemitism only to face worker exploitation in the New World's factories. A powerful, brutal story of familial love, which shows how love may not be enough when larger forces threaten those we cherish.
The stories that worked best for me largely followed a traditional narrative structure and had historical elements, including Among the Thorns, Phosphorus, and Burning Girls. I also appreciated the punk-saturated Ballroom Blitz for its unflinching look at depression, and the weird-house tale Swimming, in which the experimental structure uniquely suited the story. Alice: A Fantasia, Serpents, and Lost in the Supermarket left me scratching my head. I was not always enamored of Schanoes's habit of inserting herself into her tales. They sometimes read like political essays rather than stories; Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga is the most prominent example.
Despite the weaknesses of some of the stories, I was enthralled enough with this collection's strongest moments to seek out more from this author in the future.
Reviews of the short stories:
Among the Thorns, 5/5. In 17th-century Germany, Itte loses her father to antisemitic violence and devotes her life to seeking revenge on the town where he was made to dance in thorns and then hanged.
I loved how Schanoes executed the slow burn of her tale, making space to show how Yakov's death affects his family as they live on without him. It makes the revenge story all the more affecting, and the unexpected compassion Itte finds within herself more poignant.
The writing was brutal, not shying away from centuries of cruelty toward Jews, but also lyrical and utterly compelling. The ending was perfect - not unjust, but tempered with mercy.
How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead, 4/5. A surreal, unsettling meditation on the mindset of a person who is about to lose a loved one. Schanoes weaves together imagery from the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, Snow White, and modern-day hospital rooms. She evokes the feelings of pain, numbness, and shocked detachment experienced by nearly everyone who lives long enough to lose someone they cherish. A painful listen, but weirdly compelling. The last sentence roots the story firmly in the finality of the real world.
Alice: A Fantasia, 2/5. I liked two-thirds of this, which speculated on how Alice Liddell and her sisters may have been affected by their controversial relationship with Lewis Carroll. Then the whole thing fell apart with a nonsensical rhyming-word fugue that went on for nearly 5 minutes. I think Schanoes was trying to emulate Carroll's wordplay (a la Jabberwocky) but it brought what was a promising story to a screeching, confusing halt.
Phosphorus, 5/5. Schanoes tells the story of an historic labor strike by putting readers into the shoes of a match-factory worker dying from "phossy jaw" in London in 1888. As their intolerable working conditions drive desperate women to strike, the protagonist's grandmother makes a heartrending sacrifice to allow her to live long enough to witness the outcome.
The story unflinchingly depicts human exploitation in pursuit of greater profits, condemning a system in which so many must suffer before the most modest of reforms are enacted.
Ballroom Blitz, 4.5/5. 12 brothers are cursed to live in a seedy punk club forever, after the eldest nearly kills a teen boy in a bar fight. They party hard all night and wake each morning to despair, with broken bodies and killer hangovers.
When Isabelle walks into the club with her 11 sisters, Jake sees their salvation. They must dance together for 101 nights to break the curse. Jake is so focused on what he needs from Isabelle, he doesn't wonder what brought her to the club or the cause of her frequent black moods.
A contemporary parable about learning to truly care for another person, as well as an unflinching look at struggling to function with a mental illness.
Serpents, 2/5. An updated little Red Riding Hood, in which Charlotte takes "the path of pins," falls down a rabbit hole into the NYC subway system, and finally arrives at grandma's house. Twisty and weird, with some effective urban imagery, but the ending made absolutely no sense.
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga, 3/5. Part historical essay, part fantasy story, and part personal meditation on leftist politics. After losing her beloved older sister and growing disillusioned with the Bolshevik revolution, Goldman considers a tempting offer from the fabled Russian witch. The story was most effective focusing on their meeting and Goldman's choice. I think Schanoes could have told her story entirely through the lens of fantasy without inserting her meta-perspective, which felt awkward.
Rats, 4/5. A fictionalized retelling of the heroin- and despair-fueled relationship of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen that offers a plausible explanation of how she died. Similar in theme to Ballroom Blitz but darker and more uncompromising. A savage critique of the romanticization and commodification of mental illness, drug addiction, and early death.
Lost in the Supermarket, 2/5. Schanoes really likes punk music and Alice in Wonderland. This is the third story to reference Alice and the third to use punk as a storytelling device . Like Serpents, it's vague and weird, and I'm not sure what point she was trying to make. The Queen of Hearts has trapped a young woman in an endless supermarket, and the ghost of Joe Strummer of the Clash comes to help her. The message seems to be to remain true to one's passions to achieve freedom, but it's shoehorned in at the very end.
Swimming, 4.5/5. An experimental story I really enjoyed, about a strange couple endlessly adding onto their behemoth of a house in increasingly weird ways. They have built a special floor for their son and his fiancé to live with them, but the prospective bride feels like she is drowning inside the house. She makes an escape plan. I interpreted the fantastical ending as a metaphor for a couple finding their own way in life, embracing their differences as well as similarities, and casting off family notions of how they should live.
Lily Glass, 4/5. Rose, who changes her name to Lily to become a Hollywood star, barely knows herself when she marries an aging playboy actor. Her life was first consumed by survival, growing up poor in a tenement, then by learning to change her looks and personality to fit the demands of film roles. She falls in love with her husband's daughter, who is two years younger than her, but her lack of knowledge of who she really is threatens to destroy her. A cautionary tale on the importance of personal identity as well as an indictment of the Hollywood system that chews up and spits out so many young stars.
The Revenant, 4/5. A story of the effects of trauma with an experimental structure that shifts between past and present and from first to third person. I was a little confused at the beginning. In middle age, a woman resurrects the part of herself she destroyed to survive sexual abuse. As a soon-to-be therapist, I loved the ending, which embraced how healing can take place.
Burning Girls, 5/5. A novella-length tale steeped in Jewish folk magic and tragedy, which follows a family from Poland to America in the early 1900s. It centers on Deborah, a worker of holy magic, who does her best to protect her loved ones with charms and spells. Twice, she must use her most powerful magic against a child-stealing demon, and each time, the magic exacts a terrible price. The story's title refers to the Polish pogroms against Jews - in America, Jews are not burned, Deborah's mother promises. But Deborah and her sister escape European antisemitism only to face worker exploitation in the New World's factories. A powerful, brutal story of familial love, which shows how love may not be enough when larger forces threaten those we cherish.
April 16, 2021
Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes
Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for the audiobook Advanced Reader’s Copy, which I received for free in exchange for an honest review.
The forward, by Jane Yolen, sold me completely on this book. Now that I’ve read the book, I agree wholeheartedly, and am blown away by the haunting beauty of so many of these stories.
Our protagonists, in true fairytale fashion (but perhaps better than I’ve ever seen it) are pushed by circumstance and historical context and prejudice and sometimes cruelty, into situations where they seem to have no choices left. It’s then that the fantastical elements of the stories come in. Through magic - sometimes ugly and grotesque magic and always with a cost – our characters retain their agency and fight back, even though they rarely win a happy ending. Indeed, these stories don’t center around the concept of happy endings, or endings, or happiness. When revenge is sought and even found, it does not end in total absolution and a clean-cut ending. At the beginning of “Rats,” Schanoes notes that all stories lie in order to wrap up cleanly, in order to have a beginning middle and end, and she plays with this truth as she writes. These stories are truer to life than a story fairly ending with, “the end,” and settle in a messier land of quiet, too-young deaths after final victories, the hope of resettling in a new place to start again after loss, the idea that even knowing the worse is coming, there will still be good on its way, and so there may be enough hope left to keep trying.
Some of these stories will stay with me for a long time, with particular quotes still ringing in my head. Some I didn’t quite understand, or read through without particularly connecting to, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the collection as a whole. I’ll write individually about each story (I have listened to the audiobook twice – first just to enjoy it, and then to guide my review, remember the names of the stories, and see if I understood anything differently the second time around.)
My favorite story was “The Revenant.” (Trigger warning for grooming of and then sexual relationship/assault of a sixteen-year-old girl by a middle aged man) The quote, "Trauma is suffering that will not stay in its temporal position,” will stay with me, as well as the surrounding paragraphs and the rest of this reflective, painful story. The way this talks about messy trauma, and is written directly addressing abusive men, knowing they won’t listen or change. It ends without true healing or vindication, and therefore stays real and relatable, even if it is human nature to yearn for the fantasy of that one perfect act of revenge or truth or justice achieved, the book closed. This story sits with you in the midst of the pain from a place lighter than it is dark, more than it leads you through to a final promised land.
My second favorite was, “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga,” which held so much, as Yolen stated in her introduction - a biography and an autobiography and a fairytale and a history and a political manifesto all wrapped into one fable. A favorite quote was, “The means do become the ends, because there is no end. There are just ongoing moments.”
“Among the Thorns,” the first story, was the exact kind of Jewish fairytale I was hoping to find in another book I read recently. I would love a second collection of stories with more of this fashion: Jewish fairytale retellings set in historical times, with antisemitism as one of the evils lurking in the woods, the divine feminine as a morally gray figure bringing the morality and powerful absence of the more traditional masculine God into question. I appreciated the queer background character in this very first story, which let me know I was welcome within these pages.
“Phosphorus” is a horror story where the fantastical, magical element is a small balm of relief set across the horror of the true historical context of capitalism, greed and cruelty and disregard of human life.
The title story, “Burning Girls,” reminds me of Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon (and like it, has a queer main character). It felt both familiar and new with the ill-met grasp at agency that the Lilith demon represents for this family. This brought a new lens to stories I’ve read about so many times before – pogroms, emigration to America, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Indeed, I think a quintessential experience of book-loving-Jewish-girls is reading narrative after narrative that touches on that one fateful night at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory – however tragic it was, it feels like as much a part of my childhood as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White.
Speaking of Snow White, “Lily Glass” was a beautiful if tragic and toxic retelling of Snow White, where the young stepmother who has smothered her childhood of poverty and illness and changed her Jewish name to one more fitting for her tenuous new life as a Hollywood star, falls more for her troubled adult stepdaughter than her powerful co-star and new husband, unravelling the false self she has created and become.
The other stories all had an interesting ambience and writing style but for one reason or another didn’t make my favorites list. “Ballroom Blitz” was interesting and well-written but didn’t speak to me as much personally. It did remind me a bit of Julie and the Phantoms and Caleb’s club, which I was not expecting to be thinking about while reading this collection. “Serpents” was so fascinating but also made almost no sense to me, which might have been the intention. Or maybe it’s about adolescence and growing into a woman, a serpent? I could not tell you. I felt like I was an inch away from fully grasping “Lost in the Supermarket” and “Swimming,” which both transform the real horror of gentrification and late capitalism into exaggerated tales of living buildings our protagonists are, or are afraid of becoming, trapped in. I didn’t realize who “Rats” was about until I read other reviews, and it makes more sense to me now (and I loved its intro about fairytales repeating themselves). I did not quite understand “How To Bring Someone Back from the Dead”, or “Alice: A Fantasia,” especially the second half of the latter.
The audiobook was great. Most of the time, it felt like the exact right way to be reading the stories, and I was truly in the stories rather than noticing that someone was reading it to me. I do think this is the kind of book I’d like to have both a text and audio version of, as some stories, most especially “The Revenant,” I’d probably prefer to read as text, at least have the option to do so. I did speed up the audiobook to listen, but that is normal for me.
I am more of a library user (and Kindle deals hunter) than a book purchaser in general, but I’m definitely buying a copy of this as I know I will want to reread many of these stories over and over.
Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for the audiobook Advanced Reader’s Copy, which I received for free in exchange for an honest review.
The forward, by Jane Yolen, sold me completely on this book. Now that I’ve read the book, I agree wholeheartedly, and am blown away by the haunting beauty of so many of these stories.
Our protagonists, in true fairytale fashion (but perhaps better than I’ve ever seen it) are pushed by circumstance and historical context and prejudice and sometimes cruelty, into situations where they seem to have no choices left. It’s then that the fantastical elements of the stories come in. Through magic - sometimes ugly and grotesque magic and always with a cost – our characters retain their agency and fight back, even though they rarely win a happy ending. Indeed, these stories don’t center around the concept of happy endings, or endings, or happiness. When revenge is sought and even found, it does not end in total absolution and a clean-cut ending. At the beginning of “Rats,” Schanoes notes that all stories lie in order to wrap up cleanly, in order to have a beginning middle and end, and she plays with this truth as she writes. These stories are truer to life than a story fairly ending with, “the end,” and settle in a messier land of quiet, too-young deaths after final victories, the hope of resettling in a new place to start again after loss, the idea that even knowing the worse is coming, there will still be good on its way, and so there may be enough hope left to keep trying.
Some of these stories will stay with me for a long time, with particular quotes still ringing in my head. Some I didn’t quite understand, or read through without particularly connecting to, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the collection as a whole. I’ll write individually about each story (I have listened to the audiobook twice – first just to enjoy it, and then to guide my review, remember the names of the stories, and see if I understood anything differently the second time around.)
My favorite story was “The Revenant.” (Trigger warning for grooming of and then sexual relationship/assault of a sixteen-year-old girl by a middle aged man) The quote, "Trauma is suffering that will not stay in its temporal position,” will stay with me, as well as the surrounding paragraphs and the rest of this reflective, painful story. The way this talks about messy trauma, and is written directly addressing abusive men, knowing they won’t listen or change. It ends without true healing or vindication, and therefore stays real and relatable, even if it is human nature to yearn for the fantasy of that one perfect act of revenge or truth or justice achieved, the book closed. This story sits with you in the midst of the pain from a place lighter than it is dark, more than it leads you through to a final promised land.
My second favorite was, “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga,” which held so much, as Yolen stated in her introduction - a biography and an autobiography and a fairytale and a history and a political manifesto all wrapped into one fable. A favorite quote was, “The means do become the ends, because there is no end. There are just ongoing moments.”
“Among the Thorns,” the first story, was the exact kind of Jewish fairytale I was hoping to find in another book I read recently. I would love a second collection of stories with more of this fashion: Jewish fairytale retellings set in historical times, with antisemitism as one of the evils lurking in the woods, the divine feminine as a morally gray figure bringing the morality and powerful absence of the more traditional masculine God into question. I appreciated the queer background character in this very first story, which let me know I was welcome within these pages.
“Phosphorus” is a horror story where the fantastical, magical element is a small balm of relief set across the horror of the true historical context of capitalism, greed and cruelty and disregard of human life.
The title story, “Burning Girls,” reminds me of Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon (and like it, has a queer main character). It felt both familiar and new with the ill-met grasp at agency that the Lilith demon represents for this family. This brought a new lens to stories I’ve read about so many times before – pogroms, emigration to America, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Indeed, I think a quintessential experience of book-loving-Jewish-girls is reading narrative after narrative that touches on that one fateful night at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory – however tragic it was, it feels like as much a part of my childhood as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White.
Speaking of Snow White, “Lily Glass” was a beautiful if tragic and toxic retelling of Snow White, where the young stepmother who has smothered her childhood of poverty and illness and changed her Jewish name to one more fitting for her tenuous new life as a Hollywood star, falls more for her troubled adult stepdaughter than her powerful co-star and new husband, unravelling the false self she has created and become.
The other stories all had an interesting ambience and writing style but for one reason or another didn’t make my favorites list. “Ballroom Blitz” was interesting and well-written but didn’t speak to me as much personally. It did remind me a bit of Julie and the Phantoms and Caleb’s club, which I was not expecting to be thinking about while reading this collection. “Serpents” was so fascinating but also made almost no sense to me, which might have been the intention. Or maybe it’s about adolescence and growing into a woman, a serpent? I could not tell you. I felt like I was an inch away from fully grasping “Lost in the Supermarket” and “Swimming,” which both transform the real horror of gentrification and late capitalism into exaggerated tales of living buildings our protagonists are, or are afraid of becoming, trapped in. I didn’t realize who “Rats” was about until I read other reviews, and it makes more sense to me now (and I loved its intro about fairytales repeating themselves). I did not quite understand “How To Bring Someone Back from the Dead”, or “Alice: A Fantasia,” especially the second half of the latter.
The audiobook was great. Most of the time, it felt like the exact right way to be reading the stories, and I was truly in the stories rather than noticing that someone was reading it to me. I do think this is the kind of book I’d like to have both a text and audio version of, as some stories, most especially “The Revenant,” I’d probably prefer to read as text, at least have the option to do so. I did speed up the audiobook to listen, but that is normal for me.
I am more of a library user (and Kindle deals hunter) than a book purchaser in general, but I’m definitely buying a copy of this as I know I will want to reread many of these stories over and over.
December 21, 2022
3 stars, an uneven collection with a handful of great stories
This is one of the toughest books I've had to review in awhile. Some of the stories in here are downright brilliant and Ballroom Blitz and Burning Girls may be the two best short stories I've read this year. But sadly, this is a collection where the quality varies wildly from story to story. Part of that is due to Schanoes experimenting with her stories in ways that don't always pay off. Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga is in some ways the most emblematic story of this collection for this reason. The story begins with a rather boilerplate history of Emma Goldman then segues into a short dialogue scene where she does meet Baba Yaga before concluding with what feels like a short personal essay about what radicalism meant to the narrator growing up. As a cohesive story, it's a mess and I didn't care for much of it. But the personal essay and insight into radical politics were real standouts and I wish they had been incorporated into the story in a more engaging narrative way.
Ultimately, this collection of political fairy tale retellings has a lot of promise and I'll keep an eye on what Schanoes does next. However, I just don't know if the collection as a whole will be worth it to most people. It's probably best read for a few stories here and there like The Revenant or Phosphorus.
This is one of the toughest books I've had to review in awhile. Some of the stories in here are downright brilliant and Ballroom Blitz and Burning Girls may be the two best short stories I've read this year. But sadly, this is a collection where the quality varies wildly from story to story. Part of that is due to Schanoes experimenting with her stories in ways that don't always pay off. Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga is in some ways the most emblematic story of this collection for this reason. The story begins with a rather boilerplate history of Emma Goldman then segues into a short dialogue scene where she does meet Baba Yaga before concluding with what feels like a short personal essay about what radicalism meant to the narrator growing up. As a cohesive story, it's a mess and I didn't care for much of it. But the personal essay and insight into radical politics were real standouts and I wish they had been incorporated into the story in a more engaging narrative way.
Ultimately, this collection of political fairy tale retellings has a lot of promise and I'll keep an eye on what Schanoes does next. However, I just don't know if the collection as a whole will be worth it to most people. It's probably best read for a few stories here and there like The Revenant or Phosphorus.
April 27, 2021
Giving this 3 stars though quite a few of the stories in this collection deserve 5. My favorites are "Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga," "Phosphorus," and "The Revenant." The title story is also very good, as are "Ballroom Blitz," "Among the Thorns," and "Rats." (Regarding "Rats," it is nice to see someone stick up for Nancy Spungen, the Jewish American girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, who has been demonized much like Courtney Love, Yoko Ono, and so many other rock star wives and girlfriends. One difference with Spungen though is that she's not alive to defend herself and didn't even survive the boyfriend and culture her demonizers think they're defending.)
The rest of the stories didn't engage me as much or didn't seem fully baked. One even seemed to be derivative of a much better one ("Lost in the Supermarket," which was a much less bloody and compelling version of "Ballroom Blitz"). I read these out of order, starting with the Emma Goldman one, the title story, and "Among the Thorns" and "Phosphorus." Those all involved historical characters and events, so I was surprised how many of the others reflected not only a modern setting but a punk aesthetic. Overall the collection is an interesting mix of punk rock culture, Jewish radicalism, and working-class girl rebellions with fairy tale and speculative fiction elements. A couple Irish girls and guys get thrown into the mix. Schanoes is certainly a talented writer and I will definitely look out for her future work.
The rest of the stories didn't engage me as much or didn't seem fully baked. One even seemed to be derivative of a much better one ("Lost in the Supermarket," which was a much less bloody and compelling version of "Ballroom Blitz"). I read these out of order, starting with the Emma Goldman one, the title story, and "Among the Thorns" and "Phosphorus." Those all involved historical characters and events, so I was surprised how many of the others reflected not only a modern setting but a punk aesthetic. Overall the collection is an interesting mix of punk rock culture, Jewish radicalism, and working-class girl rebellions with fairy tale and speculative fiction elements. A couple Irish girls and guys get thrown into the mix. Schanoes is certainly a talented writer and I will definitely look out for her future work.
April 24, 2023
Like most collections or anthologies of short stories i find that some of the stories i loved and some i did not. For this collection i found there were a few i loved and then alot that were not bad but were not my favorite which is why a rated this collection 3 stars. It was still a great collection. I honestly wished there were more of the Jewish mythology stories they were my favorite out of the collection.
A lot of the stories are retellings and mash ups of fairy tales and historical events. like taking snow white and mixing it with 1920 Hollywood, or the story rumpelstiltskin and mixing it with 1910 newyork, emigration and Jewish mythology.
If you like that type of mash ups and retelling these short stories are for you.
I will warn you, I found Veronica Schanoes writing style can be very literary, sometimes vague and some stories could be consider under the weird fiction genre. if you like that i recommend this collection if you don't like that type of style writing then this collection might not be for you.
Overall, a great collection of short stories
A lot of the stories are retellings and mash ups of fairy tales and historical events. like taking snow white and mixing it with 1920 Hollywood, or the story rumpelstiltskin and mixing it with 1910 newyork, emigration and Jewish mythology.
If you like that type of mash ups and retelling these short stories are for you.
I will warn you, I found Veronica Schanoes writing style can be very literary, sometimes vague and some stories could be consider under the weird fiction genre. if you like that i recommend this collection if you don't like that type of style writing then this collection might not be for you.
Overall, a great collection of short stories
May 4, 2021
For me, this was a mixed collection (as all are, ofc): four outstanding stories, one really good one (I just thought the ending line way too neat, even for a fairy tale, and it left me grumpy; fairy tales can elide too!!), and the rest weren't to my taste but I'm sure they're to someone's. Rating could have been for "Lost in the Supermarket" alone, tbh! Many of these will stick with me, and it's endlessly refreshing to see everything from the glowing intro actually show up, given so many intros are misleading, but obv Jane Yolen knows what's what. Jewish fabulism + socialism: the searing heart of the book and all its best stories.
September 19, 2021
First book of college! Woo I’m just thriving, having time for choice reading?!? Wow. Anyways this book was so good and really beautiful writing. These short stories were a good amount of artistic confusion, like incredibly random (ex being trapped in a supermarket and turning into a dog but then being saved by the clash’s lead singer?) but very enjoyable and profound to read! Very much prose, I wanted to bring it into my poetry class. Also learned a lot about Jewish folklore and history and all that, the amount of allusions I looked up- it was a lot. Overall a very good book, thank you Ann Arbor district library!
September 6, 2024
Absolutely top-tier, savory writing. In a lot if cases it felt more like poetry. Some stories weren't for me (some were more of a bummer than I typically like and a couple clearly took their inspiration from Lewis Carroll, and I'm personally not a fan of that level of indecipherable nonsense, although I enjoyed listening to the most nonsensical bits on audio), but they all felt very human and real.
February 23, 2021
I'll be honest, I didn't understand all of the stories, but oh man, did I enjoy them.
These short stories are MAD. They are dark and creepy and they made me say "what the actual fuck" out loud several times. I felt all kinds of emotions reading this book, and now I have to go and find more work by Veronica Schanoes.
These short stories are MAD. They are dark and creepy and they made me say "what the actual fuck" out loud several times. I felt all kinds of emotions reading this book, and now I have to go and find more work by Veronica Schanoes.
June 12, 2024
Outstanding. Certainly a cut above most fairy-tale-retold/reinvented collections. These do a great job of playing with and subverting your expectations but not just for the sake of it. More than one brought me to tears, and while with some collections I'll chew through the stories one after another with this I found I had to take time to process and digest each one after reading.
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