Stories no one hopes are about them

A. J. Bermudez, 1987-

Book - 2022

"A rogue assistant orchestrates a spectacular art world con in northern India. A custodian-turned-thief absconds to Antarctica while awaiting her trial. A family's underwater vacation is subverted by a murderous school of fish. In a series of 20 short fictions, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them takes the reader to the ends of the earth, from the ocean floor to the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, from an 18th-century German "house of the dead" to death row at Sing Sing to a party at the local zoo. We're guided by cocktail servers, serial killers, and theme park princesses. Many of these characters--like us--should probably be elsewhere. At once playfully dark and slyly hopeful, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them ex...plores convergences of power, privilege, and place. Characters who are ni de aquí, ni de allá--neither from here nor there--straddle competing worlds, disrupt paradigms, and transition from objects of other people's stories to active subjects and protagonists of their own. Narratives of humanity and environment entwine, with nuanced themes of colonization, queerness, and evolution at the forefront. Big things happen in this collection: wars, revelations, ecological catastrophes, curses, crimes. But it's also a collection of small intimacies: misremembered names, chipped teeth, and private rituals; unexpected alliances and barely touched knees beneath uniform skirts; minutiae of the natural world; incidents of quietly, achingly, and delightfully transgressing the familiar. With delicate wit, a breakneck pace, and a featherweight boxing style of nimble, merciless prose, Stories No One Hopes Are About Them is about the places and personhoods we inhabit, including the places and people we probably shouldn't be. Each story touches on an undeniable past and a possible future: a glimpse of who we are and what we might become."-- more