Chiara Barone > Recent Status Updates

yeah no i want to throw up

i cried approximately 5 times already

Baby's first plague: A telling of a young woman going through Covid. Incredibly well explained, but it was weird to read about the pandemic as well. Her going up and down with her mood; the people she saw had no names rather just nationalities, reflecting her feelings: she was home but she didn't feel at home (same as everyone else during the pandemic). Would have rather not read about the parents fucking but oh well

And the ballroom: I find this one incredibly sad. A brother suddenly losing his sister. A young mother slowly becoming deaf. “I know what I’m losing now”.
You can see how much he looks up to her, and how much she depends on his opinion even if she pretends she doesn’t. Even if she runs from it, from him, from herself.

Dog men: I could not get into this one. Too many characters, a bit messy -maybe due to the fact that it took me a while to realise that this was dog racing and I really don’t know anything about this topic. But this means, I learnt something about it now. Interesting that all men have a name, except for the “dog man”, the one that ends up doing the least human thing at the end.

The sluagh: I have no idea what I just read and I loved it. Literally felt like I was on drugs in the best way possible. I have no idea what actually happened in the story: what was the dream? what was the memory? what was reality? And all of this in 20 pages. Boy what a writer.

Crispy bits: "If I could, I'd climb between your ribs and cover your heart with my mouth".
"The sky spilled silver onto the dirty honey sand and she was exhausted by the hope of him".
These are the first and last sentences of this story. I think they say enough. Wow.

Forge worlds: Two co-workers haunted by changes in their lives. Two fuck ups, of different levels, yet equal in effects on their lives. The writing style here reaches a different kind of level. The dual POVs are still there (smt i see recurrent in all the short stories), but this one had smt more.

Have to be honest, this was the harder to get into so far (and longest story as well), but I still really enjoyed it.

How do you know them?: The two different POVs, the two different lives, converging into a single paragraph of a shared experience, then moving back to separate stories. I do not know anything about these people yet i seem to get so hooked on them.
"they don't know this but we all have it carved". Is "all" us readers? is it all people? is it the wedding guests? the bride and the groom? who's telling the story?

Off your chest: Time feels slowing down and at the same time speeding up. The descriptions are amazing. The flow is particular, jumping from the outside to the inside, from the world to the recording. All seems calm until the last 2 pages, and suddenly there's a shift, a dark one. Def unexpected, and at the same time it fits perfectly with the story. And its only took 15 pages. This is crazy work.

First short story —Tourists: Conor is fucked over by a situationship with an American in Erasmus in Dublin. Buddy we’ve all been there. But oh how beautiful the writing is. Shannon’s red hair and tourist soul put into words incredible feelings we’ve been trying to puzzle.
“she felt like she was always wearing a coat of frayed nerves, that the last year felt like living under her country, not in it.”