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Loading... The Rock Eaters: Storiesby Brenda Peynado
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   )  HanJie | Jan 15, 2022 | 
Brenda Peynado’s first collection, The Rock Eaters, places her in that growing cadre of talented short fiction writers who seem equally comfortable in venues as diverse as The Georgia Review and Tor.com, and whose voice is just as distinctive when writing about real-world poverty and student debt or about grim futures in which people take refuge in VR while their bodies vegetate in clean rooms to protect from ravaging plagues on the outside. As a member of the rare category of writer whose work wins an O. Henry Award as well as appearing in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology, Peynado flaunts breathtaking literary agility....Throughout The Rock Eaters, Peynado conjures both the playful sorcery of Kelly Link and the haunted atmosphere of Kali Fajardo-Anstine. But in her search for meaning in the immigrant experience — and the borderlands of emotion, possibility, and belonging — she populates a dimension all her own. Melding science fiction, fantasy, fable, and legend with atmospheric prose, these stories touch on a wide range of topics: immigration, race, climate change, the inexorable millennial hustle, influencers, gun culture, and the fraught, electric urgency of friendship between adolescent girls....A sparkling, strange, and enthralling debut from a vivid new voice in contemporary fiction. Peynado probes the limits of reckoning with such dilemmas as otherness, loss, and love in her glorious debut, a collection of inventive and fabulist stories.... Rich social commentary on immigration, xenophobia, and right-wing Christianity underlie the title story...These alluring stories make powerful use of their fantastical motifs, enhancing the realities of the characters’ lives. The author’s skillful storytelling soars. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first-generation experiences to xenophobia What does it mean to be other? This question murmurs in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado's strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their "thoughts and prayers" will protect them from the world's violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. "The Great Escape" tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she's hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded. With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity"-- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.21)
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