By Abby Geni
- Pub Date: 2024
- Genre: Short Stories, Body Identity
- Where I bought this book: Parabras Bilingual Bookstore, Phoenix, Ariz.
- Why I bought this book: It has a really cool cover (designer: Jaya Miceli)
- Bookmark used: Hobart (N.Y.) Book Village
They can make you smile, laugh, and cry.
But sometimes, they can be redundant or predictable, leaving you wonder if the author has any more ideas in her head.
This collection has all of those promises along with the flaws.
Take the first story, The Rapture of the Deep, a tale about Eloise, a scientist and deep-sea diver who studies sharks. While underwater, she thinks about her broken family, her connection with her fellow divers, and the time she suffered a shark attack that led to 467 stitches and "a mottled red ribbon of teeth marks."
Her somewhat estranged brother cannot understand why she continues to dive. She does -- in beautifully written remembrances of the mother who taught her to dive, of her experiences underwater, of her love of the sharks she studies -- and wishes he could have the same appreciations.
I loved the tale, her happiness, and her desires to show her brother her joys. It works on many levels.
A Spell for Disappearing, about a woman falling in love for the first time who starts to see that she must outwit a lover who has shown dark side, is similarly engaging.
A few more tales are also engrossing, until you start to see the patterns and realize the stories share more than a common theme -- they tend to read the same, and you can see what's coming next. Perhaps if I read them in a different order, or put more time between readings, I'd continue to enjoy each one a little bit more.
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