Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 4/5 cats
i was not expecting this ARC, it just showed up at my place decked out in that delicious cover, and i was intrigued enough to read the author’s letter accompanying the book, which begins:
As always, it’s tremendously difficult to talk about Comfort Me With Apples without giving away the whole game. From the jump, we ruefully laughed about how hard it would be to market a book with such a massive twist that we can only vaguely tell anyone what it’s about beyond: You just have to read it. Trust us.
well, consider that effective marketing, because that paragraph alone was enough to make me put Matrix on hold for a day in order to see what this massive twist was all about.
rereading the letter after reading the book made me laugh out loud (man, if only there were a shorter way to type out that phrase), because something she wrote after this paragraph is such a marvelously sly instance of I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!
and, no, i won’t type that part out.
it’s a little Bluebeard, a little The Stepford Wives, and a lot ████████, and while i didn’t find it “terrifying,” it was delicately unsettling and a finely wrought little splinter of a novella.
“I am happy, ████████*. How could I be otherwise? I am fed, I am housed, I am busy, I am loved.”
Her voice catches on the last word.
sincere apologies to Lauren Groff for temporarily putting you in the corner, but i don’t regret being part of a small handful of readers who know ALL THE SEEKRITS!
* name redacted to avoid potential spoilers for those of you with specific BACKGROUNDS.
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