April 12, 2021
A fugue of hunger, consumption, and motherhood unites the 21 fabulist shorts in Balaskovits’s exquisite second collection (after Magic for Unlucky Girls). Balaskovits uses modern sensibilities and scarcity to subvert classic genre tropes, rendering them tenderly, brutally human: the anticapitalist “The Tale of a Hungry Beauty” offers a profound deconstruction of Beauty and the Beast in deceptively simple prose, and the ominous “Strange Folk” refracts the concept of a small-town haunting in a way that’s both heartrending and genuine. The carnivaleque historical fantasy “The Mad Monk’s Weeping Daughter” and the soft but fierce “Get Bent” examine women’s pain as a complex, changeable state that can be exploited—or reclaimed. Though repeated themes cause several of the shorter vignettes to blur together, Balaskovits’s prose never fails to impress, capturing the cadence of fairy tales while bringing a literary sense of detail and subtext to clearly loved genre tropes. This accomplished collection interlocks the horrific and the wondrous through deliciously dry humor, resulting in a unique must-read for fans of Angela Carter, Maria Dahvana Headley, and A.S. Byatt.
Starred review from August 1, 2021
In this collection of short stories, Balaskovits digs into the strange and surreal of the fairy tales we think we know, using body horror, dread, and the uncanny to imbue those stories with a new set of twists. "In the Belly of the Bear" depicts a girl who has the dubious blessing of being indigestible; "The Skins of Strange Animals" digs deep into the themes of incest in the classic story ""Donkeyskin."" The daughter of Rasputin must dance, night after night, in an artistic interpretation of her father's murder, attracting audiences with her tears. A woman with no arms and sharp teeth makes herself vocal cords out of molten silver. The collection is haunted by terrifying, strange children; gruesome moments of devouring dirt and blood; mothers grasping at straws and women seeking revenge. While some of the tales can struggle with being too ephemeral and vague, the gems in this collection make it worth a look for adult fantasy readers who enjoy fairy tale retellings that have a sprinkling of horror mixed in.
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