Song for the Unraveling of the World

paperback, 240 pages

Published June 11, 2019 by Coffee House Press.

ISBN:
978-1-56689-548-4
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3 stars (10 reviews)

A newborn’s absent face appears on the back of someone else’s head, a filmmaker goes to gruesome lengths to achieve the silence he’s after for his final scene, and a therapist begins, impossibly, to appear in a troubled patient's room late at night. In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception. Here, self-deception is a means of justifying our most inhuman impulses―whether we know it or not.

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Review of 'Song for the Unraveling of the World' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I've read a few single-author short story collections now, but this is one of the harder ones to review because of the wide range of... I don't wanna say 'quality' because they were all well-written from a grammatical standpoint and there was nothing wrong with any of the 22 stories, but I guess there was a great variance in how much a given story was holding my attention. There were some entries that I just sort of let wash over me indifferently, and others that were really damn good and had me gripped. So taking the collection as a whole, I think it's safe to just split the difference and acknowledge that a few stories were doing the bulk of the heavy lifting for me.

Also, was not expecting so much sci-fi going into this. The majority of the works were set in normal, contemporary settings, but every so often …

Review of 'Song for the Unraveling of the World' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

There are a few recurring patterns in this collection. Very broadly, the further a story got from our world the better it tended to work for me.

I enjoyed "The Tower", "The Hole", "Glasses", and "Smear" quite a bit. The title story, "Shirts and Skins", and "A Disappearance" were not up my alley at all. Most of the others didn't hit me too strongly one way or the other.

And then there was "Trigger Warnings", which felt like someone wanted to write a "get off my lawn" rant after listening to Radiohead's "Fitter Happier". Worth a shock chuckle or two but what a bizarre fit.

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