A review by livtheninth
Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes
4.0
First of all, I might as well state my biases. This is a feminist short story collection with queer flavor, and I’m a queer feminist. So, there. Feminist spins on fairy tales, mental illness, worker's rights, immigration and Jewish folklore as well as Jewish persecution throughout the centuries form a cohesive foundation here; these are threads that weave through the entire collection, like trails of breadcrumbs for the reader to follow through each story. Another bias: I have Jewish heritage, but grew up outside any sort of Jewish community, so the folklore elements are really intriguing to me.
With all this in mind, while I do think that I got extra enjoyment out of some of the stories specifically because of these biases, this is a short story collection that I think anyone who wants a good read should pick up once it’s released (March 2021).
This collection starts off incredibly strong with “Among the Thorns”, Schanoes’ follow-up and response to The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale “The Jew Among Thorns”, wherein the titular Jew’s daughter sets out to avenge her father’s gruesome death at the hands of gentiles. Considering the stark antisemitism that permeates the original story (as well as others found in the Grimm oeuvre), “Among the Thorns” makes for not only a captivating tale of revenge, but a powerful reclamation of the narrative as a whole.
Having been utterly enthralled by this first story, the following two stories, “How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead” and “Alice: a Fantasia” have a tough act to follow, and they didn’t resonate quite as well with me. But they are both very short, and so do not overstay their welcome. This is something that I felt rang true for a lot of the shortest stories in this collection – like they were deeply weird momentary glances into some trauma or other, momentary lapses of sanity, their narratives often oblique in nature. Like maybe I’m not meant to understand them fully, because they weren’t written for me… which is okay, because the longer stories definitely were. All of the stories in this collection are gorgeously written, though, so I still found enjoyment in the shorter ones, despite not feeling as connected to them emotionally. Schanoes shines stylistically – an Associate Professor of English, she certainly knows what she’s doing from choice of words to formatting, and it shows.
In “Phosphorous”, one of the longer stories, we get kind of a horror take on historical events – we follow poor, young matchstick girls suffering from phosphorous necrosis who attempt to unionize for better working conditions and a living wage. The vibe is, of course, very socialist, and Marx is quoted. It’s a harrowing tale of poor people slavery and the human cost of industrialization and capitalism. There are actual horror elements in here, but they take a backseat to the horror that is laissez-faire capitalism. Ten out of ten, comrade.
The theme of the plight of the working class is of course also present in “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga”, in which we see the legendary political activist Goldman, disillusioned and burdened by years of struggles and betrayed by her own revolution, sit down with the equally legendary witch of the woods. Half of it reads as a history lecture, the other as a fairy tale, and both are equally interesting. I loved the concept, and I loved learning more about Goldman from a different point of view, through a magical lens. Also, since it’s rare that “older” women (middle-aged and up) get to be the main characters in stories, this story gets brownie points for featuring an “older” Emma.
And, of course, while on the theme of worker's rights... “Burning Girls”, which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2013, closes out the collection in style. Here, too, the story is thick with Jewish folklore and mysticism, explores Jewish persecution, pogroms and immigration, and I was completely transported by it. Its complex and cursed characters became very tangible for me, and at the end of the story, I wanted to reach through the pages and hold these women’s hands through everything befell them, much the same as I felt with the main characters of “Phosphorous” and “Among the Thorns”.
Now, I have to give special recognition to the stories that broke me the most: “Rats” and “The Revenant”.
“Rats” is a brilliant retelling of the doomed life of, and romance between, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. That’s not all it is, though. It’s also a meticulous and harsh examination of how we as a society tend to romanticize destructive relationships, mental illness, self-harm and substance abuse, to the point where we, over 40 years later, wear the faces of those who died too young on our t-shirts. Sid and Nancy were just children of parents who lost them way too soon, but in death, they have become icons, their fate portrayed as somehow darkly romantic by profit-driven companies who commodify their tragic deaths. Neither of them got the help they needed in life, and the saddest part is of course that thousands upon thousands of Sids and Nancys are out there right now, suffering, hurting themselves or others and receiving no help. Of course, their eventual tragic ends won’t be commodified, but they won’t be any less tragic for happening outside of the public eye.
So, finally, “The Revenant”. I don’t know where to begin with this story. It tore me in half, but it stitched me together again at the end, because this is a revenge story that left me feeling somewhat personally vindicated.
It is, tragically, a tale as old as time: a young girl, naive to the ways of the world, is taken advantage of by an older man. The young girl is cast aside, broken, having lost her innocence, having to live with her trauma for the rest of her life. The older man moves on basically the second he walks away from her, going home to his family, because in the end, she was nothing but warm meat to a predator like him. We know this story. Perhaps we’ve lived it.
But here is where the magical element shakes things up. The broken girl, now a damaged but outwardly functioning grown woman, resurrects a revenant – the ghost of the girl she was, the girl who died a long time ago in the older man’s embrace – and this revenant emerges with a terrifying and bloody purpose...
Listen. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve fantasized about what I would do to my own predators, my aggressors, my rapists? Maybe you do, if you’ve ever lived through an assault. Then you will truly understand how gratifying it is to read someone else’s revenge fantasy, seeing it play out, basking in the glory of it all. And this dreamed up, horrible violence, blood for blood, might not heal the trauma. Maybe nothing ever will. But there is something in me, too, an ugly and twisted but justified shadow self which cannot help but rejoice at revenge as sweet as this… leaving them violated, broken and traumatized in return. And this story touched that part of me, deeply.
This collection stands out to me, because while I’ve read similarly feminist tales, none of them have had the strong focus on Jewish history and folklore that I found here. That sets it apart for me, and having read it, I’m more excited than ever to learn more about my heritage and my roots. That’s a huge plus. And I’m equally as excited to read whatever Schanoes writes next.
Huge thanks to the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review!
With all this in mind, while I do think that I got extra enjoyment out of some of the stories specifically because of these biases, this is a short story collection that I think anyone who wants a good read should pick up once it’s released (March 2021).
This collection starts off incredibly strong with “Among the Thorns”, Schanoes’ follow-up and response to The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale “The Jew Among Thorns”, wherein the titular Jew’s daughter sets out to avenge her father’s gruesome death at the hands of gentiles. Considering the stark antisemitism that permeates the original story (as well as others found in the Grimm oeuvre), “Among the Thorns” makes for not only a captivating tale of revenge, but a powerful reclamation of the narrative as a whole.
Having been utterly enthralled by this first story, the following two stories, “How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead” and “Alice: a Fantasia” have a tough act to follow, and they didn’t resonate quite as well with me. But they are both very short, and so do not overstay their welcome. This is something that I felt rang true for a lot of the shortest stories in this collection – like they were deeply weird momentary glances into some trauma or other, momentary lapses of sanity, their narratives often oblique in nature. Like maybe I’m not meant to understand them fully, because they weren’t written for me… which is okay, because the longer stories definitely were. All of the stories in this collection are gorgeously written, though, so I still found enjoyment in the shorter ones, despite not feeling as connected to them emotionally. Schanoes shines stylistically – an Associate Professor of English, she certainly knows what she’s doing from choice of words to formatting, and it shows.
In “Phosphorous”, one of the longer stories, we get kind of a horror take on historical events – we follow poor, young matchstick girls suffering from phosphorous necrosis who attempt to unionize for better working conditions and a living wage. The vibe is, of course, very socialist, and Marx is quoted. It’s a harrowing tale of poor people slavery and the human cost of industrialization and capitalism. There are actual horror elements in here, but they take a backseat to the horror that is laissez-faire capitalism. Ten out of ten, comrade.
The theme of the plight of the working class is of course also present in “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga”, in which we see the legendary political activist Goldman, disillusioned and burdened by years of struggles and betrayed by her own revolution, sit down with the equally legendary witch of the woods. Half of it reads as a history lecture, the other as a fairy tale, and both are equally interesting. I loved the concept, and I loved learning more about Goldman from a different point of view, through a magical lens. Also, since it’s rare that “older” women (middle-aged and up) get to be the main characters in stories, this story gets brownie points for featuring an “older” Emma.
And, of course, while on the theme of worker's rights... “Burning Girls”, which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2013, closes out the collection in style. Here, too, the story is thick with Jewish folklore and mysticism, explores Jewish persecution, pogroms and immigration, and I was completely transported by it. Its complex and cursed characters became very tangible for me, and at the end of the story, I wanted to reach through the pages and hold these women’s hands through everything befell them, much the same as I felt with the main characters of “Phosphorous” and “Among the Thorns”.
Now, I have to give special recognition to the stories that broke me the most: “Rats” and “The Revenant”.
“Rats” is a brilliant retelling of the doomed life of, and romance between, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. That’s not all it is, though. It’s also a meticulous and harsh examination of how we as a society tend to romanticize destructive relationships, mental illness, self-harm and substance abuse, to the point where we, over 40 years later, wear the faces of those who died too young on our t-shirts. Sid and Nancy were just children of parents who lost them way too soon, but in death, they have become icons, their fate portrayed as somehow darkly romantic by profit-driven companies who commodify their tragic deaths. Neither of them got the help they needed in life, and the saddest part is of course that thousands upon thousands of Sids and Nancys are out there right now, suffering, hurting themselves or others and receiving no help. Of course, their eventual tragic ends won’t be commodified, but they won’t be any less tragic for happening outside of the public eye.
So, finally, “The Revenant”. I don’t know where to begin with this story. It tore me in half, but it stitched me together again at the end, because this is a revenge story that left me feeling somewhat personally vindicated.
It is, tragically, a tale as old as time: a young girl, naive to the ways of the world, is taken advantage of by an older man. The young girl is cast aside, broken, having lost her innocence, having to live with her trauma for the rest of her life. The older man moves on basically the second he walks away from her, going home to his family, because in the end, she was nothing but warm meat to a predator like him. We know this story. Perhaps we’ve lived it.
But here is where the magical element shakes things up. The broken girl, now a damaged but outwardly functioning grown woman, resurrects a revenant – the ghost of the girl she was, the girl who died a long time ago in the older man’s embrace – and this revenant emerges with a terrifying and bloody purpose...
Listen. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve fantasized about what I would do to my own predators, my aggressors, my rapists? Maybe you do, if you’ve ever lived through an assault. Then you will truly understand how gratifying it is to read someone else’s revenge fantasy, seeing it play out, basking in the glory of it all. And this dreamed up, horrible violence, blood for blood, might not heal the trauma. Maybe nothing ever will. But there is something in me, too, an ugly and twisted but justified shadow self which cannot help but rejoice at revenge as sweet as this… leaving them violated, broken and traumatized in return. And this story touched that part of me, deeply.
This collection stands out to me, because while I’ve read similarly feminist tales, none of them have had the strong focus on Jewish history and folklore that I found here. That sets it apart for me, and having read it, I’m more excited than ever to learn more about my heritage and my roots. That’s a huge plus. And I’m equally as excited to read whatever Schanoes writes next.
Huge thanks to the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review!