The Hungry Girls and Other Stories

by Patricia Eakins, Judy Sohigan (Illustrator)

The title story won a Charles Angoff award in 1987. These stories are a modern bestiary which rework the stuff of mythologies, spanning the cultures of the planet, reclaiming for the Imagination its territories from Science. They are counterfables in which the usual fabulous project is reversed: animal characteristics are attributed to humans, and humans and animals are seen as codeterminants of the moral and cultural landscape.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Literary Fiction, 20th Century

137 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

the monstrous and very hungry girls eat dirt and plow fields; men come to live in their bodies. the abandoned wife wears the skins of snakes - snakes who her recognize her grace, even as a beggar. these little dog-things aid in copulation. those strange flower/pig things root in radiation. horses of light, horses of dark. feral are the mermaids; your mouth will be their womb. this great thing clings to immortality but her partner wants only to procreate, and then to die.

new legends. a bestiary. pseudoethnography, pseudobiology, pseudomythography. the nature of man and woman, societies, cultures, civilization itself... explored but not explained. dreamtime is real time. each new myth, each new creature is familiar yet unique. it is a unique book as well.

Eakins' stories take different forms, strange beautiful jewels, no two alike. a bizarre creation myth... a tale of the Old West... reports from a desolate research station... a story from the steppes of Central Asia... the journal of a runaway slave. Eakins is true to each myth, fable, or personal narrative, adjusting her style completely to fit the story told. the prose is incredible! most difficult of all was the intensely alien recounting of the slow transformation of ocean things into land things: "Salt": hard to read and harder to understand; finishing it felt like an accomplishment, like climbing a mountain somewhere remote, where no one speaks your language and everyone is faster on the path than you could ever be. other stories were easier to read, easier on the brain, but just as satisfying and certainly just as rigorously - almost coldly - intelligent. the brisk "Auravir" is a sharp and witty Greek myth concerning a race of seductive golden monkey-people. the delightful "Banda" is a European fairy tale that details the lives of sweet little bear-things and their neverending battles with witches over the lives of the children that cross their paths. although each story is perfectly accomplished, perhaps the standout is "Oono". steeped in Inuit culture, it is about a hunter, his wife, two gigantic and godlike creatures, "dog-tooth" spirit guardians, and two passionate heart-spirits that dance, duel, and are eventually trapped together. the story was funny, resonant, profound - and highlighted as a favorite by Ursula K. Le Guin, which made perfect sense.

it's tragic that this brilliant collection is not better known. truly a buried treasure.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m excited to present the third episode of my podcast, in which I read “Oono” by Patricia Eakins. The story of a species of creature known as oono, so massive it can't be seen in full, and the ignook couple who is trying to start a family in the arctic wilderness. Their only hope is for the aspiring father to connect with an oono spirit even if it means deceiving him, even if it means becoming more than human.

Patricia’s collection is like Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings come to life. Definitely don’t miss out on this and if you enjoy it, feel free to share it.

Podcast platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1849671

YouTube: https://youtu.be/6CHDBJL5cQg

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patricia Eakins shapes myths, fairy and folk tales, and fables into her own fully-realized fantastic world. She writes from a point of absolute certainty in her vision. Some tales have more of a narrative arc and I enjoyed these pieces the most. But there's an element of scientific curiosity behind the narration that drives forward even the least story-based pieces. All of them present the grotesque as an everyday reality while subtly blending in social commentary. Quite an extraordinary collection.

[Nate D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elegantly conflating classical/mythic narrative modes and such an array of complex reproductive strategies that an invertebrate nature documentarian would be dizzied by them, The Hungry Girls becomes a kind of alternative ethnography to a teemingly strange world: beautiful, playful, disorienting, satiric, apocalyptic. Nothing may foreseen in these stories, each unexpected progression may turn outwards to the universal as easily as inwards, and few find their way to finales which may be predicted from their openings. Digressions and expansions somehow pick up momentum of their own and supplant their origins, bringing each tale to satisfying close well outside of its initial apparent scope. And despite the diversity of approaches and voices, Eakins' program maintains a rare cogent cohesion throughout its parts, each nearly equally essential. Very much a new favorite, even from the first few stories, and (rare in such a collection!) those that followed did not slacken in the least.

[Jack Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fans of Robert Coover would relish these stories, each a world of its own. I read this collection slowly to both relish it and as a palate-cleansing necessity since the stories teach you its own language and logic. The beauty, horror, and wonder of nature and creatures comes alive here. Though the phrase is used often, Patricia Eakins is a treasure.

[B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories are highly imagined and well written. History, relations and conventional meaning are often subverted to create unique, self-contained miniverses, which lead you through their elementally surreal worlds without knowing where they’ll end up. The first few stories were excellent, but the rest were mostly just decent. A pleasurable experience nonetheless. I also liked the intro and the first interview included in the book.

[Katrinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very grateful for the conversation with Eakins at the end of the book, which I think I enjoyed more than the stories themselves—maybe just because origin myths, folklore, etc., don't really do anything for me, even neat/smart creative spins on said types of tales. (What I'm confronting here, I think, is the fact that appreciation for craft may not be balanced by enjoyment of said craft.)

[barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike anything else you have ever read or will ever read. Fabulist stories about mythical animals and creatures; each story mimics a traditional story type (Japanese fable, French fairy tale, travel narrative, scientific notebook, Inuit creation story, etc. etc.). Fascinating and unique.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read a goodreads comment once (about kafka's 'investigations of a dog', i think) that talked about a "certain type of reader" that couldn't be grouped with genre-readers, best-seller-readers or others, and which was exactly the type of reader that would enjoy kafka's short story. although this person didn't expand much on this certain type of reader besides the fact that they would enjoy "bizarre" things that would be nonsensical or unimportant to other readers, i understood exactly what they meant. i am that type of reader and this is exactly the kind of book that makes us go crazy!!!

i don't exactly know how to describe this book. i don't even know if i should call them short stories because the author said she was exploring the same idea from different angles, which makes you think this is all part of the same project. it certainly feels that way while you read; these short stories feel like a unit, like they should be read together, like chapters of a novel, even though this isn't a novel. maybe they're more similar to a poetry collection. every short story is a little tale or fable which grabs and mixes various themes and voices from ancient cosmologies, cultural history, bestiaries, and science. their backbone is very mythological, and the narrative voice is something between the distant coolness of ancient poetry and that of an anthropology report. besides their intense humanness, these stories are extremely interesting pieces just from the point of view of fiction in general. many of the themes are borrowed or inspired by actual societies, beings and historical facts. many of their details are made up but sound truthful enough (and this is on purpose) that get mixed with the vague historical facts and cultural heritage we know in our brains. she literally makes up words sometimes because they sound good when intertwined with the rest of the story (imagine me, with my learned english, googling words like "slukie" and "vollow" thinking maybe they were archaic irish terms or something).

these stories are lyrical, violent, bizarre, historical, mythical, fictional, true, cheeky, sad, human. i really appreciated the author's interviews at the end. the stories talk for themselves, but reading the critics' analysis and questions and the author's answers really ties it all together.

[Hannah Glass · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book and mythology, she writes stories I want to tell my children (or someone else's!) one day to scare them.

[Gay Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strange and bizarre book that plays with language and reality. Patricia's stories are poetic and especially good read out loud--by Patricia herself.

[Geoffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The temptation to compare this to Borges or Calvino may seem insurmountable, but really, it's very much it's own thing, shockingly new in a way that fiction rarely is. Not to be overlooked.

[Lungstrum Smalls · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small book that’s filled with wild and strange creatures that feel very real in their weirdness and humans’ cultural habits surrounding them.

[Camilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty amazing collection of a wild imagination. Unfortunately, the quality of the stories varied a lot for me. Each one mimics a particular genre (fairy tale, scientific journal, Japanese myth), and some of them just get way too heavyhanded with the old fashioned talk and whatnot. "Salt" was a big offender for me. Actually, to tell you the truth, that was the only one I didn't like. It was just so bad it knocked a point off... Otherwise, though, if you like fairytales or myths or just amazing creatures, read it. It's beautiful and gruesome all at once.

[Kate Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Look, all I want is creaturely stories that honor how bizarre and complex and unexpected creatures can be. So yes, I loved this book.

[Deb cambria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just not for me, not my preferred genre but what an imagination