A review by tdstorm
Horse, Flower, Bird, by Kate Bernheimer, Rikki Ducornet

3.0

A lot shorter than I expected. Each paragraph of each of the 8 short stories in this collection has its own page. The effect is that the stories feel simultaneously shorter and longer than they actually are. But they are quick reads. The first couple didn't capture my imagination as much as stories 3, 4, and 5, which were effective allegories of social isolation. "A Doll's Tale" tells of a quirky little girl who develops close relationships with a doll and then with an imaginary friend, both of whom she loses. "A Petting Zoo Tale" tells of a lonely housewife who has a secret petting zoo in her basement. "A Cageling Tale" tells of another girl alienated from her family, who becomes attached to a caged bird, and then later in life, seeks to inhabit cages herself. These are spare tales, very much in keeping with a fairy tale-esque simplicity, but poignant nonetheless. The common thread is family dysfunction, but Bernheimer doesn't sensationalize the typical realist catastrophes of alcoholism and adultery and the like. Instead, she focuses on more mundane and subtle complications of family, that sort of love/hate relationship we come to have with those we spend a lot of time around. This paragraph from "A Cageling Tale" might be emblematic of the entire collection: "The girl grew to love the parakeet so much it was painful. Sometimes she imagined roasting its sweet body, putting the poor thing onto a stick over a fire--it was so small and delicate, it was not hard to think this" (101).