Green Fuse Burning

Life was like a language I couldn't speak.

I've been meaning to read this for WAY too long, and I'm glad I finally did. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author and it was lovely! I love grief-themed horror stories and this one portrayed it beautifully. While the more horror-centric elements of the plot lost me at times, I kept being drawn back in by not only the protagonist's commentary on grief and loss, but also by her own mental struggles with simply existing. I thought the ending felt a little bit rushed and wouldn't have minded the novella being longer, but overall, I really enjoyed it.

I read a final copy borrowed from the library, but for the sake of disclosure, I was also gifted an early review copy. All thoughts are honest and my own.

✨ Representation: sapphic Mi'kmaq main character, sapphic side character, portrayal of a sapphic relationship

✨ Content warnings for: grief, loss of a parent, terminal illness, suicidal ideation, erasure of Native culture, climate crisis descriptions, parental abuse (brief)

beautiful, horrifying, timely.

lost me at some bits, but the afterword really pulls it all together for me.

The imagery in this book is stunning, you get a sense of the settings that's sprawling, primeval and majestic but also somehow oppressive and suffocating.

The prose is lovely, both evocative and contemplative. Morris really knows how to strike just the right balance between form and function so the prose never comes across as needlessly convoluted or as plain.

The structure is interesting, each chapter begins with a review of one of the paintings Rita made during her stay at the cabin and with our increasing understanding of the imagery and of Rita state of mind it becomes increasingly uncomfortable and anxiogenic.

I really liked Rita and found her struggle with grief, her relationship with her girlfriend and with her own sense of self highly relatable. Rita is not just mourning the loss of her father but that of her sense of belonging to a culture that's both hers and not at once, it's a grief that's nuanced, heavy and tremendously important, Morris managed to bring these topics to the page in a most elegant way.

While there is a lot of story in this novella nothing feels rushed and there's an almost gothic vibe to the horror.

4.5 rounded up, the only reason this one isn't a 5 is that at one point near the end it got a little hard to follow.

I received a digital ARC of this book for review consideration, many thanks to BookSirens and Stelliform Press.