Joy Reads Books

Tag: short story collection

A Disquieting Future: Review of a Thoughtful Short Story Collection

I was fortunate to read “Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive”, a collection of deeply visceral short stories by Canadian writer, Alison Gadsby. Futuristic and catastrophic, her writing is inexplicable and draws the reader through the unfamiliar to bear witness to the subtle acts of violence and their memory enacted upon women’s bodies, regardless of time or space.

The wicked and plain madness of robots and pregnancy

The collection begins with “The Deal with Roger”, an absorbing and disquieting exploration of a woman’s loneliness and her desperate climb out of a codependent and sometimes violent relationship. Gadsby subtly builds tension and a familiar world around Mirabel, she goes for weekly swims and has an overbearing father but there is something slightly off. The world advances and stays the same.

Alison Gadsby truly excels at inviting us into the inner lives of women, not at their best or most achieved, but when their sexuality turns them to brutes and their apathy is intent on destroying all that is good around them. Anger and retributive violence are made available to women’s curiosity in “Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive”.

“Swimming” is a story about the wicked and plain boring madness of early motherhood when time is lost and the ends of your body are connected to an infant or aching for it. Gadsby expertly weaves in the casual misogyny of the narrator’s father-in-law, her body and mind pulled in multiple directions by the men and boys that surround her. The outcome makes as much sense as it does not. It is like looking at something you think you know, but it has fallen into the water and the waves obscure its lines.

The acts of violence are startling and ethereal, like in “The Going Rate of Grief”, where time is a manipulation if you try hard enough. The futuristic setting she has created, brick by innocuous brick is its own form of violent oppression and judgment. Each story is a weird, intricately woven experience in the unexpected.

The future where human experience exists between lines of light and code.

Who should read “Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive”

Alison Gadsby’s “Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive” is for every woman and female aligned or assigned person who has stood at the edge of a precipice and imagined who they would push into it. It is for the readers who spread fire across the shiny surface of a conference room table when the men won’t let anyone else speak, for fear of being caught in their lies. It is for anyone who likes the weird and wonderful and imagines what it would be like to poke a jellyfish with their brother’s finger.

There is realistic reference to sex and violence as well as the indignities and injustices of being alive: Cancer, infertility, alcohol and abuse. Dreams lost and found. Loneliness and the ecstatic experience of love. That is the gift of Gadsby’s writing in this collection. It is set in an automated future society with the same petty realities and fears of human experience.

“Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive” is available for pre-order now, full publication by Guernica Editions in March 2026. To see more from Alison Gadsby, check out her website and follow her on IG!

Special thanks to Guernica Editions for making the collection available to read on NetGalley!

February 10, 2026
When Beautiful Writing Makes the Horror Deeply Disturbing: Review of Annie Neugebauer’s “You Have to Let Them Bleed”

A quietly devastating collection of horror short stories.

Cover title of “You Have to Let Them Bleed”, from Bad Hand Books.

It was a terrible and breathtaking delight to read “You have to Let Them Bleed”, where the fear seeps in slowly, like spilled honey. In this short story collection, sprinkled with vivid and wild poetry, two-time Bram Stoker award winner and award-winning poet, Annie Neugebauer, is at her finest.

Why this Horror Collection is So Scary Good

Each story is carefully crafted to draw the reader into a world of the ordinary and recognizable but something goes terribly wrong. With every turn of the page, Neugebauer reveals how modern horror writing can be as beautiful and lyrical as any piece of great literature.

In “Churn the Unchurning Tide”, a story of quiet mob mentality running through a group of middle-aged women in an outdoor pool, the visceral descriptions of the tarantula that interrupts the women’s class is disquieting. She draws the reader into the women’s demented and unsettling world and sprinkles just enough hope and light to settle your breath.

The tight writing of “Cilantro” conveys a depth of meaning, sorrow and horror. My favourite of the collection, I was absorbed in the telling of Jason’s grotesque metamorphosis. The narrator’s lament of their relationship breakdown is real and terrible, the kind of reflection that takes place when a relationship comes to an end. Neugebauer expertly takes us to unexpected and rather horrifying places, weaving body and insect horror with her marvellous play with words to create a masterpiece of dread.

Who this short story collection is for

Recommended to an audience equipped to handle horror. At first I wrote “mature audience” but really, if you can’t handle some blood, light cannibalism, or clowns, this fine collection of short stories are not for you. There is something about a rite of passage as a reader to start reading horror far too young. We all have a story about a Stephen King or Shirley Jackson story that ruined a little part of our childhood and still unsettles us to this day.

Annie Neugebauer is not a graphically violent writer but she explores some themes that might be tough for some readers. She’s also such an exceptional and talented writer that “You Have to Let Them Bleed” has to be read.

Early editions with signed bookplate are available from Bad Hand Books mid-February, so get in there and pre-order. The full publication date is March 17,2026.

Special thanks to Bad Hand Books for providing me with an advance copy. The team over at Bad Hand is fighting the good fight and they publish stunning horror that ruins my sleep and forces me to read in the daylight hours (in the best possible way).

Check out my review of Things That Go Bump and The Atropine Tree, also published by Bad Hand Books.

January 28, 2026
Glowing By the Light of “Frail Little Embers”: A Literary Review of new Short Story Collection

It was a delight to read “Frail Little Embers” by Fjia Callaghan, this collection of short stories is a sweet and tender package of magical realism. There is tea, handmade candy, visits to the sea, folklore both light and dark, and subtle tension woven through each story. Her passion for using myth and folklore “to creat stories that give people hope in times of darkness”, as stated on her bio, is evident in this collection.

“Running with Wolves” is a gentle retelling of Red Riding Hood when the roads are closer to the woods and Red has a smartphone. The beauty of a short story is the way in which it can tell us a lifetime of sorrows and joys in one small passage of time and we experience this repeatedly through the collection.

Callaghan plays around with form, such as in “September Sunsets” and passages of evocative and whispery poetry. It works in this story but I’m unsure how necessary it is within the context of the entire collection. At the same time, the structure of the story is in sharp contrast to the many ways Emily misunderstands everyone around her, from her daughter to the man who brings her firewood.

There are certain lines throughout this short story collection that are devastating in their lyrical beauty, “I curled up in a ball of smoke and shadow and ached for all the things I didn’t understand” (Callaghan, 141) from the Edge of Morning made me pause while reading. This was my favourite in the entire “Frail Little Embers” collection, it showcases Callaghan’s form and the way her writing is like a song.

At twenty-one stories, I think it’s fairly long for a short story collection. Some stories, like “The Fleeting Ones” read like a character sketch with limited plot but a lot of foreshadowing that could have been fleshed out in a meaningful way. There’s potential to fill in the spaces and if anything, there’s more than one collection here if the time had been spent to find them. This could be coming from a selfish place as I look forward to reading more from Fjia Callaghan.

Recommended to readers who enjoy whimsy and delight, magical realism, folklore, myth, and magic.

“Frail Little Embers” was published on 8 April 2025 by Neem Tree Press, thanks to them for making the title available on Netgalley for review!

Did you know I’ve started publishing my own short fiction? You can find it over at Under the Poplar Tree on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, I publish a new short story every other Thursday.

April 1, 2025
Books I Read in 2024 that Made an Impact

The following, in no specific order, is a round of eight books I read in 2024 that made an impact on me. The phenomenal books on this end of year list are not all new releases, some are a few years old and one is considered a classic. There’s fiction and non-fiction alike, murder, sex workers and difficult women. It doesn’t even encompass the many books I read or listened to that I truly enjoyed. These are the books that immediately came to mind when I sat down to reflect on what made me say, shit, that was a great book, then stare ahead and absorb the words. Without further ado, the Eight Books of 2024 That Made an Impact (on me):

Whores, Harlots and Hackabouts, Kate Lister: Sensational. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Professor Lister, and she has a fantastic northern English accent that carries you into the history. She is thoughtful in addressing a really difficult subject, compassionate and uproariously funny. Sex work isn’t the oldest profession, as she argues in the book, but it is very old and it is one that is frowned upon unless you have the right economic status and pretty face. History is ridiculous and hilarious, but it’s also a rich resource for us to learn and Kate Lister is one of my favourite guides.

The Five, Hallie Rubenhold: The first Jack the Ripper book I read was the famous narrative that put forward Queen Victoria’s grandson as the murderer. We had recently moved in with my grandmother and I had started raiding her bookshelves (also where I found a sensationalized account of the Black Donnellys). “The Five” is nothing like that 1970s pulp non-fiction, though Rubenhold does reference it in her very well-done book about the five victims of Jack the Ripper. She eloquently breathes life and some agency into these women who were brutally cut down, their memory intertwined with their unknown murderer for generations. You can find my review here.

Sinister Graves, Marcie Reardon: This is the third instalment in the Cash Blackbear series by Reardon. I discovered the first in her series, the award-winning Murder on the River, as a happy accident at the library. Cash Blackbear is an intriguing Native American woman with abilities to see things not of this world and she assists a local police officer, who has also become her mentor and only family. Book four in Reardon’s series is coming out in 2025, so I’m looking forward to that!

Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler: Absolutely quintessential and necessary reading for anyone who is interested in speculative fiction and post-apocalyptic stories, but also philosophy and the human experience. Butler is an absorbing writer, her broken world, before it became that way, is unsettling in how familiar it is, but that is why post-apocalyptic storylines work so well. They are both a cautionary tale and a horror that could never happen.

Difficult Women, Roxane Gay: A powerful, painful and beautiful collection of short stories. Roxane Gay is a professor, editor, social commentator (from Twitter to the New York Times) and writer. This collection is raw and spectacular, it reveals bits and pieces and of what makes us whole.

The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen: A slow burn psychological thriller, “The Wife Between Us” is a great read as the weather chills and you have the opportunity to sit snuggled up by a fire. The storyline takes us back and forth between Vanessa, the scorned ex-wife of Richard, and his new fiancée Nellie. The women’s lives are intertwined in ways the reader would never expect.

Calling My Deadname Home, Avi Ben-Zeev: I loved this incredible memoir by Dr. Ben-Zeev. An honest and very loving look into the life of a trans man trying to heal himself and the journey with his family and loved ones. You can read my review here.

As 2024 unravelled and unfurled into whatever will come in the next year, these books were more than just stories. Each brought its own wisdom, touch of magic and introspection, growth and tears, which is a testament to the formative power of reading. A well-told story can change how you see the world.

What were books that impacted you the most this year? Share your favourites below in the comments, I’d love to hear other readers’ reflections and recommendations.

December 11, 2024
Things That Go Bump: A Review of Horror Short Story Collection “Long Division”

The short story collection, “Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse and Bad Manners” is an incredible collection from independent publisher, Bad Hand Books. A shivering delight from start to finish, each story plays on the different fears and unsettling creep of societal breakdown. This anthology pulls you into the darkness, quickly and fiercely. I was a massive horror reader for the longest time, I don’t think there was a Stephen King or (going back now) R.L. Stine book I didn’t read. I don’t typically gravitate towards horror now, even though I love it and my own short fiction writing is quite dark. I’m really happy “Long Division” landed in my inbox, because it was such a fun, heart pounding, sometimes disturbing read.

Featuring tales from familiar voices like Chuck Palahniuk, there were new to me voices like Anna Taborska with “Third-Time Lucy” and Lora Senf with “Blight. Palahniuk’s “Celeste” is raunchy, absurd and everything I think you can expect from a Palahniuk romp.

Anna Taborska has created a bleak and dim world where classism has gone completely awry, she builds incredible tension and confusion. She explores the impact of dehumanization and how notions of class and worth are still upheld as the infrastructure of our known world collapses.

“Blight” is a story of a mother’s sacrifice and the ways men will destroy everything around them and ultimately the world with their own hubris. The little girl with the fortune telling skin is fascinating with lyrical prose that pulls the reader into this mysterious world.

Cynthia Pelayo’s Mrs. Darling in “Fire of Roses” is delightfully ominous, I think this was my favourite short story in the collection because of the way it builds and plays with the reader. Horror doesn’t always have to be gory bloodshed, in fact it’s more effective when the horror comes from how people behave.

I really enjoyed Andy Davidsons “The End of the World, After All” for the fluidity in the writing style, it has a feel of Stephen King’s “The End of the Whole Mess”. Deeply flawed people greeting the end of the world in some of the only, typically damaged and damaging, ways they know how.

Recommend to horror and short fiction lovers!

Thanks to Bad Hand Books for providing an early copy for me to review! As of publication (6 November), you can pre-order “Long Division” via their site, it’ll be available to order 12 November.

December 6, 2024
Cocktail Book Review: Lisa Alward’s Masterful Storytelling is a Must-Read

I found Lisa Alward’s “Cocktail” on a visit to Fredericton this past summer. We visited Westminster Books, as well as the phenomenal Lord Beaverbrook Gallery a few blocks away. Published in 2023 by Ontario-based Biblioasis, “Cocktail” was Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and appeared on the Globe and Mail’s “Sixty-Two Books to Read this Fall”. This collection of twelve short stories was an absolute boozy and nostalgic delight to read.

The collection delves into the complex inner lives of relationships, and deftly encapsulates searing and poignant moments in time. Alward effectively infuses each story with rich detail and simmering emotion. Spanning the decadent 1960s to the present, the characters are middle class and sometimes willingly obtuse in navigating their space, but such is the beauty of life. We are welcomed into a world where people see the world through a lens awash in dimmed sepia tones and shag carpeting.

“Hawthorne Yellow” is an intricately woven tale in which we feel the humid tension building between a house painter, a young couple and the things an old house can hide. Such is Alward’s ability and precision in capturing the emotion in a short period of time.

The characters face the regular upheavals that come with having relationships, and the way desire can be more of a haunting as in the title story, “Cocktail”.

Lisa Alward’s “Cocktail” has earned well-deserved critical acclaim. The characters and sense of them lingers long after reading the collection.

Recommended to lovers of short fiction, readers who enjoy emotionally detailed and rich literary fiction. Written from a feminist perspective, “Cocktail” explores themes of love, loss, redemption, female anger, social expectations and concepts of motherhood. Available at all fine retailers, but most especially at a local independent seller.

December 2, 2024
Characters Take Flight in MONARCH: Literary Review of New Short Story Collection

In Emily Jon Tobias’ new collection of short stories, “MONARCH”, we are confronted by realistically flawed characters who are given the space to form, make mistakes, and heal. An award-winning writer and Pushcart Prize nominee, Tobias was raised in the American midwest and now lives in Southern California. The way she captures and releases hard fought words has a feel of that hardscrabble grit you used to associate with an essential Americanism. It’s all the more poignant that the characters in MONARCH are imperfectly real – addicts and sad girls, overwhelmed mothers and people whose tether to sanity has loosened.

Tobias plays with language and voice to raise her characters into existence.The title story stopped my breath and as I read, I had the distinct sense that Tobias was gleefully playing with her words, stretching out each sentence to its limit, a fullness like the protagonist’s intentional weight gain. My first inclination – trim these sentences, they seem too full created the sense I was as quick to jump to conclusions as the people who brazenly stare at Georgia and judge her size. Such is the subtle brilliance of Tobias’ writing – the excess was an intentional weight and slowing down that ties us to Georgia.

We see this again in “Vida”, the sentences short and choppy with Wiley’s anger. Tobias’ characters are confused and confusing – which is what I feel most days. Which is to say, each is fully formed in their humanity as its splayed on the page for the brief glimpse we have as a reader. We are like passersby, sometimes witnessing these characters’ worst moments and the way Tobias intends to pull them through and heal some of the cracks.

The book includes a reading guide that is straightforward to use, and I think this book works well for readers looking to include more diverse character sets in their reading. It depicts largely heteronormative experience, while also giving space and life to queer characters. Upper level English class settings, as well as guided reading groups – there is intention in the way Tobias has cultivated this collection and guided readers to know the characters in their complete selves, regardless of identity or partner. The writing is accessible with beautiful prose, worth a read because of that alone.

Find MONARCH via Emily Jon Tobias’ website or visit your local bookseller.

June 14, 2024