Review by Booklist Review
Bertino's (Beautyland, 2024) second short-story collection, though swathed in otherwordly beings and strange scenarios, is rooted in a profoundly earthy tenderness for the human condition. One gets the sense that any one of these 12 pieces could become another of Bertino's matchlessly imaginative novels, in which a dead grandmother comes back as a talking parakeet and a girl communicates with her alien ancestors via fax machine, but they are complete, too, encapsulated as they are. In the title story, called to clean up the "sensitive items" of her estranged and newly dead father, Jo discovers the unicorn he'd been keeping, names the creature Jasmine, attempts to cohabitate with her in a motel room, and "for the first time, Jo believes in her father. This family is closer than ever." In another story, a couple picks up some roadside peaches so haunted that divorce becomes inevitable. The collection finishes strong with two stories about mothers, one who nearly died and one who never will. With winsome wildness, capturing the uncapturable, Bertino offers up marvels on every page.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Odd and surreal circumstances shape this potent and darkly funny collection from Bertino (Beautyland). In "Edna in Rain," a woman's exes and former crushes fall from the sky one by one while she's out for a walk, exchanging banter with her that makes her "feel like God's favorite sitcom." The title story centers on Jo, an only child, who inherits her estranged father's house, which comes with a smirking unicorn that lives in the backyard. With the aid of a zookeeper, Jo learns more about the creature, a process that also sheds light on her own life and her father's legacy. In another delightfully bizarre entry, "Can Only Houses be Haunted?," a married couple finds that the peaches they bought at a farm stand are possessed by the spirits of dead people. Other stories take a more charming view of horticulture, such as "Flowers and Their Meanings" and the mysterious "The Night Gardener," the latter of which follows a lonely woman vying for a prize in a gardening contest. Each story is driven by energetic pacing, quick wit, and surprising twists. Bertino once again displays her formidable talent for the uncanny. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Twelve stories that slide into the magical while staying determinedly real. The protagonists of Bertino's stories tend to be beleaguered yet brave, quixotic yet stouthearted, bemused by but also compassionately attentive to the strange worlds they find themselves inhabiting. In the title story, Jo, a disaffected event planner for a national association of doctors, travels to her estranged father's New Jersey home after his death only to discover that, in addition to the detritus of his mostly solitary life, she has also inherited his pet unicorn. In "The Night Gardener," Claudia prepares her small patch of yard for the local Horticultural Society's City Gardens Contest in a near-future world wherein species after species is succumbing to extinction. When balloons carrying messages seemingly meant just for her begin to appear in her garden, Claudia switches her focus from bearing witness to a departing world to attempting to communicate with what lies just over the horizon between the living and the dead, the present and the unimaginable future. Bertino's characters--largely women living through interstitial periods between love affairs ("Edna in Rain,"), during the death throes of marriages ("Can Only Houses Be Haunted?"), between accident and aftermath ("Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher")--are unique in their own right but also comfortable vessels for readers' experiences of feeling adrift in a world that admits to no defining beginnings and no definitive ends. Even if the reader's world does not include unicorns, semisentient balloons, or ex-lovers falling from the sky, it is a good bet the characters who experience these travails will remind us of our neighbors, our friends, even ourselves as we navigate their worlds in Bertino's confident hands. Ardently whimsical, yet never centerless--solid stories about our tenuous times. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
