Gutshot by Amelia Gray
My rating: 4/5 cats
jeff vandermeer’s drawing of this cover:
to answer the question “how does this book hold up to Threats or Museum of the Weird,” this is better than Museum of the Weird, but not nearly as good as Threats.
which is absolutely in keeping with my own particular reading preferences, as Threats is a novel and Museum of the Weird is an earlier story collection, and i’ll pretty much always choose a novel over a collection. i’ve grown as a reader – after prolonged resistance, i eventually came around to short story-appreciation, but these are short short stories. the book is just over 200 pages, and there are THIRTY-SEVEN dang stories in it. that’s too short! although i definitely liked many of the stories, and i appreciated the little callback to People of the Bay in Precious Katherine.
for the most part, these are more scenarios than stories – where some weird, gross, or uncomfortable situation is described and it starts to head somewhere, but then it cuts off before checking all the boxes that would qualify it as a story.
and just to be clear, i mean “weird, gross, and uncomfortable” in a positive way – those are all things that appeal to my sensibilities. this collection is full of abduction, cannibalism, murder, blood, vomit, genital modification, twins both conjoined and absorbed, ulysses s. grant, characters who say things like, “I wish I had a dog boner,” and that’s just the normal stuff; the stuff that your brain is familiar with, before you factor in all the talking pimples, exploding mosquitoes, and subcutaneous ants.
some of my favorites in the collection:
Monument
Fifty Ways to Eat Your Lover (particularly for the title and last line)
Labyrinth
The Swan as Metaphor for Love (greg was right!)
Date Night
Blood
Thank You
Legacy
and some of my favorite lines:
Device:
The young inventor created a device that could predict the future within one-tenth of a percent of accuracy….
“What will my eventual mate be like?” he asked, tweaking the machine’s color wheel.
“Skin, hair.” The device buzzed lightly. “Fingernails.”
Western Passage
“His attention is a penny placed on a monument. Give the monument your prayers, not the coin.”
Go for It and Raise Hell
This is the literal goddamn opposite of two middle-aged people going on their first date in a coffee shop.
House Proud
It’s harder to leave your burning home after you’ve spent so much time cleaning its floors.
etc etc.
there are some really great stories in here, enough to bop the collection up to a four star cat, but i’m even more excited that she’s just come out with another novel, Isadora, even though it’s still baffling to me that this author is writing historical fiction like she’s philippa gregory or something…
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review to come, but just for now, i wanted to share my favorite from the collection, because it is so short.
A Contest
The gods decided that, once a year, they would have a weeklong contest and allow the one person who felt the most grief over the loss of a loved one to have that loved one return. They made a contest of it for their own curiosity and amusement and to boost morale in the beyond. It was a hit on the planet: Piles of flowers obscured the names on every cemetery grave and highway shrines glowed elaborate with electric light. A wealthy man held a parade for his mother, which spanned eight city blocks and included great rolling floats representing her spinach casserole and childhood home. On a flat expanse of farmland, a woman used sweaters and slacks to spell out ALAN in the event the gods passed overhead in a helicopter, as they sometimes did. Three girls scrubbed the grime from the corners of their friend’s locker and decorated it with streamers. Somebody’s grandfather placed a single rose on the pillow beside him and wept until he died, thoroughly missing the point. A child’s preserved room was filled with candy until the windows broke, spilling wrapped butterscotch and strawberry suckers into the street. Weeks later, on the third floor of an apartment building, a woman opened her door and saw that her little black cat had found his way home.
ADDENDUM
in an eerie/sad bitchslap by the universe (perhaps getting back at me for all the unkept promises and such), i posted this placeholder review, with my favorite story-declaration, just a couple of days before my maggie-cat died, and now i feel this story in a much more personal and gutting way. thanks, universe. you dick.
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the SECOND book in my third literary subscription box from quarterly,
and my third amelia gray book overall. how will it hold up to Threats or Museum of the Weird?? i will tell you soon!
sidenote/confession:
i’ve actually had this book in my house for years – greg read it and lent me his copy, telling me to read The Swan as Metaphor for Love, because i would really like it, and i meant to – i meant to so many times, but i just never did because i am terrible, and then this box forced me into fulfilling at least ONE of my intentions, and i was able to give greg his copy back and a corner of the universe was set right.
