A review by oddly
This House of Wounds by Georgina Bruce
3.0
This House of Wounds is a dark, experimental short story collection that is interested in identity, specifically that of the feminine, and the fracturing and remaking of selves along with the dissonance between the real and the imagined.
Bruce’s writing is quite unique, creating half-formed grotesqueries and fantasies in my mind, things I could almost picture but were still insubstantial, dissipating like wisps of fog when I tried to really grab ahold and unpack them. It was beautiful to read, but I often found myself struggling to see through the layers to what was actually happening in the plot. This obfuscation sometimes added a dreamy layer to an already phantasmagorical wonderland, and sometimes frustrated.
I definitely latched on more to the stories that I could more easily follow plotwise, which is not to say that those stories were by any means simple. Each one offers new worlds, like in “Cat World,” where there is dissonance between the horrors that young girls are subjected to in the real world and a mysterious place they can experience when they chew a stick of special gum. In “Wake Up, Phil,” the fracturing of identity is tied up in an Orwellian futuristic product war that has the main character doubting every aspect of her life and self. “Little Heart” offers a thesis statement on how our identities are created, with a great collision of memory, experience, and action—some of it real, some of it learned, some of it imagined.
I was glad to have two smart reading buddies—Tracy and Emily—around to bounce some ideas and questions off of while reading through this collection. It is definitely a difficult read that takes some dedication, and while I struggled with some of the stories, I ended the collection with an understanding that sometimes, it was just better to let the magnetic writing and viscera of images flow over, even if I didn’t fully understand the content.
My thanks to Undertow Publications for sending me this one to read and review.
Bruce’s writing is quite unique, creating half-formed grotesqueries and fantasies in my mind, things I could almost picture but were still insubstantial, dissipating like wisps of fog when I tried to really grab ahold and unpack them. It was beautiful to read, but I often found myself struggling to see through the layers to what was actually happening in the plot. This obfuscation sometimes added a dreamy layer to an already phantasmagorical wonderland, and sometimes frustrated.
I definitely latched on more to the stories that I could more easily follow plotwise, which is not to say that those stories were by any means simple. Each one offers new worlds, like in “Cat World,” where there is dissonance between the horrors that young girls are subjected to in the real world and a mysterious place they can experience when they chew a stick of special gum. In “Wake Up, Phil,” the fracturing of identity is tied up in an Orwellian futuristic product war that has the main character doubting every aspect of her life and self. “Little Heart” offers a thesis statement on how our identities are created, with a great collision of memory, experience, and action—some of it real, some of it learned, some of it imagined.
I was glad to have two smart reading buddies—Tracy and Emily—around to bounce some ideas and questions off of while reading through this collection. It is definitely a difficult read that takes some dedication, and while I struggled with some of the stories, I ended the collection with an understanding that sometimes, it was just better to let the magnetic writing and viscera of images flow over, even if I didn’t fully understand the content.
My thanks to Undertow Publications for sending me this one to read and review.