Burning Girls and Other Stories

  ‘'I will surround that town with death. I will wrap death around their hearts, and I will rip them apart. I will kill them all. Every one.''
Go, girl! Leave not a sperm alive, that's how you deal with terrorists. Don't like the truth? I don't give a fuck, stay away from my page.
Don't let the pompous tags written by idiots on the back cover dissuade you from reading this gem. These tags are a hideous lip service to the minority who cries like a mob in a frenzy, the ones who support terrorists and the ones who believe that the words ‘'mother'' and ‘'father'' should be abolished from the vocabulary of every language in the world. I am not Jewish, I am not a feminist, I am not queer and I sure as Hell am NOT a leftist. Yet, this collection is one of the most difficult, demanding and memorable I've ever read. Forget about the aforementioned tags that would influence the narrow-minders, we are readers, honour our vocation.

‘'They made my father dance in thorns before they kill him.I used to think that this was a metaphor, that they beat him with thorny vines, perhaps. But I was wrong about that. They made him dance.''
Among the Thorns: A story set in Germany becomes a metaphor for anti-semitism, the Nazi terror and the unyielding bravery of the Jewish people, along with the fire of revenge of a daughter whose unbreakable bond with her dear father was violently shuttered.
‘'It hurts to come back from the dead. And it hurts to bring someone back from the dead.''
How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead: A haunting ode to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and the despair of losing the one you love.
Alice: A Fantasia: A diving into the creation of the character of Alice by Lewis Carroll.
‘'They've got to hear us, Lucy. All the way to Mayfair and Parliament. Maybe all the way back to Ireland. That'd make old Parnell proud, wouldn't it?''
Phosphorus: Based on Hans Christian Andersen's Little March Girl, this a brilliant retelling of the deep wound left on the lives of the Irish people following the Great Famine and the appalling conditions in the factories of London. It reads like a nightmarish Dickens and it's brilliant!
Ballroom Blitz: Based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses -one of my favourite fairy tales- this is a modern retelling in which twelve boys and twelve girls carry on dancing in a bar that is both suffocating and enticing. The boys find themselves in a pretty bad shape but each morning they become healed in a tale that is tragic, slightly gory and ingeniously beautiful. No spoilers but Jake and Isobel are Perfection!
‘'Will you take the path of pins or the path of needles?''
Serpents: A mystical, cryptic retelling of The Little Red Riding Hood.
Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga: So, when you vote for the Right, you are a fascist but when you vote Left you are a democrat?
Are you familiar with theories on paranoia?
I have no interest in anyone's wounded pride in thwarted Communist dreams and the only Baba Yaga I like is found in Russian tales and the John Wick movies. I'll just pretend this story never happened.
‘'But my gift to your child is pain. This child shall suffer and she will not understand why; she will suffer and she will always be alone in her suffering, world without end.''
Rats: A nightmarish retelling of The Sleeping Beauty, set in a world of sex, drugs and Rock n'Roll that was poetically tragic but didn't really make sense nor added any fresh breath into the original tale. I'll stick with that, thank you. 
‘'And I miss the light. I miss sunlight, candlelight, moonlight, starlight, streetlights, headlights, spotlights. All I have now are fluorescent lights, and I think they're the reason that I vanished in the first place. They've turned my skin translucent.''
Lost in the Supermarket: The Queen of Hearts has lured and imprisoned a girl in a supermarket. That is one of the most WTF stories I've ever read and I definitely enjoyed it.
Swimming: Parents-in-law (God, how I HATE this term...) can be rather intimidating. But what happens when they are utterly weird and obsessed with creating a house to rival the Versailles? What starts as a humorously strange story becomes a poignant, haunting fable in its shocking end.
‘'The girl is gone from the castle and her stepmother wanders the corridors.''
Lily Glass: A retelling of Snow White, set in the world of the Golden Age of Cinema. Three characters find themselves in the heart of a troubled and troubling relationship. One of the show-stoppers in the collection.
The Revenant: The chronicle of a highly dysfunctional relationship told through the narration of a Revenant. Not a fan of this one despite the haunting writing. I was 18 once, but I wasn't stupid and age should not be an alibi for degrading yourself. 
‘'In America, they don't let you burn. My mother told me that.''
Burning Girls: The story of a Jewish girl who has immigrated to the USA is the tale told so many times about the hands that built America. Yet, it has never been said in such a haunting, terrifying manner. This is a gothic, mystical, haunting retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, it's beyond gorgeous and THE best story in the collection.
‘'And I saw worse. The world around me teemed with flickering images, nightmarish visions of stone roads carrying metal beasts, of burning homes, of people pressed like livestock into mechanical carts, children crying, separated from their parents, toddlers' heads dashed against walls, of starvation, and our neighbours turning on us, only too glad to agree to our degradation and murder. The visions persisted no matter where I turned my head, and there was no reprieve, nor any justice, no justice anywhere.''
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/


 

For me the collection was uneven, and the stories fall inte two categories: stories I loved, and stories that were fine. The collection is well worth the read, though.

The stories I loved were: Among the Thorns, Phosphorus, Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga, Lily Glass, and Burning Girls.

Average Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.8

I knew nothing about the author or this collection itself when I requested an arc of this book. All I saw was that stunning cover and title, and I knew I wanted to read it. And it didn't disappoint. While there were a couple of misses, this is a beautifully written collection of stories about women - resilient women who have to find the strength within themselves to overcome very harsh circumstances - they might not always succeed but they never give up. The writing itself has a very fairytale-esque feel to it and it made the whole experience quite magical but also horrific at times. Definitely worth a read if you enjoy short stories with feminist fairytale themes and lots of Jewish religious and cultural elements.

Among the Thorns

Featuring a mother goddess and young girl full of grief, this is a story about antisemitic violence across centuries, how it has affected so many families, and what might happen if someone decides to take revenge. This is also the tale of a mother's love and her abundant capacity for compassion, even in dire circumstances.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

How to Bring Someone Back from the Dead

This was too short for me to form a concrete opinion about it. But its about what lengths you will go to for the one you love and while its an interesting theme, the story didn't live up to it.

⭐️⭐️

Alice: A Fantasia

This seems like some kind of a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, but the second half was very confusing after a fascinating first half.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Phosphorus

Set against the backdrop of unskilled workers strikes for better wages and working conditions during 19th century London, this is a poignant tale of resilient women doing everything they can to survive their brutal circumstances and unimaginable suffering.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ballroom Blitz

CW: gore, depression, self harm

Another story where I might not have completely understood the point, but the depiction of rage, despair, helplessness and depression through the writing was very on point.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Serpents

This was quite frankly very weird because I am terrified of snakes and this story was full of very vivid descriptions of snakes as well as other creatures.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga

An excellent mix of history, politics and fairytale - this is a story about the promise of revolution; particularly the Bolshevik revolution; but how ultimately it turned on its own principles and its people, becoming a dictatorship that oppressed everyone. Despite the hopeless tone of the story, it's also a call to remember that revolutions may not be kind, but the present regimes are equally cruel.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Rats

CW: body horror, self harm, drug use, mental health issues

This was a difficult read and the story was very bleak, but it's also about the futility of self harm and how so many young teenagers across the world are dealing with drug abuse and mental health issues, and how they need more support instead of recriminations.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lost in the Supermarket

CW: animal mutilation

Ironically, I was also lost in this story and not in a good way. It was interesting to read but I just couldn't figure out what it was meant to signify. Or atleast the bit that clicked for me was about how our supermarket aisles are filled with varieties of every item and some of us find it hard to even choose, but there are so many others who still go hungry. Vividly written but probably it just wasn't for me. The numerous pop culture references (which I had no clue about) didnt help either.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Swimming

This was another weird story but I have to give it to the author, the descriptions here were very impressive and amusingly grotesque. And I think I understood the idea of losing ourselves so much in our ambition to achieve something, that we forget why we started out in the first place and that's why it's important to keep our feet on the ground always.

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Lily Glass

The story of two young women trying to find their identity and come into their own, this was beautiful, emotional and bittersweer.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Revenant

CW: child abuse

This was another difficult read and the author truly captures the loneliness and troubles of a young girl who just needs someone to listen to her but life isn't fair. The author explores trauma in a speculative manner and I thought it was very well written.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Burning Girls

The author ends this collection with another story that sets off against the backdrop of antisemitic violence, which forces two young sisters to move to the New World, and fight both human and supernatural demons in their struggle for survival. It is exquisitely written, full of emotion and wonder and pain and I can't think of a better conclusion or titular story.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A captivating novella that weaves history, magic, fantasy and fairy tales together to form a story that is difficult to put down.

A jewish girl in Poland, trained to be a witch by her grandmother. Demons, contracts, a new life in America. This short story goes far, and is dark whilst it does so.

If you don't mind a foray into the occult this is worth a read.