Bonding - BookWyrm

140 pages

English language

Published Dec. 20, 2022

ISBN:: 978-1-954899-06-3
Goodreads:: 60001227

(2 reviews)

"Maggie understands that splatter for splatter's sake is boring. Psychopathy is boring. Coldness is boring. She's interested in feeling, and when her stories turn violent (as they frequently do), it's with a surreal emotional barbarity that distorts the entire world. You can mop up blood with any fabric. Maggie's concern is with the wound left behind, because the wound never leaves-it haunts. As a result, each of these stories leaves a wound of its own. Some weep, watching as you try (and fail) to recover. Others laugh. But never without feeling." -B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space

"And once finished, I felt like my tongue had been misplaced, guts heavy and expanded ... gums numb with a tongue that'd been put elsewhere, my mouth clean around a pipe weaving up through pitch and shadow ... and well past ready, primed for delight, waiting but knowing I had already been filled …

"Maggie understands that splatter for splatter's sake is boring. Psychopathy is boring. Coldness is boring. She's interested in feeling, and when her stories turn violent (as they frequently do), it's with a surreal emotional barbarity that distorts the entire world. You can mop up blood with any fabric. Maggie's concern is with the wound left behind, because the wound never leaves-it haunts. As a result, each of these stories leaves a wound of its own. Some weep, watching as you try (and fail) to recover. Others laugh. But never without feeling." -B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space

"And once finished, I felt like my tongue had been misplaced, guts heavy and expanded ... gums numb with a tongue that'd been put elsewhere, my mouth clean around a pipe weaving up through pitch and shadow ... and well past ready, primed for delight, waiting but knowing I had already been filled to skin; crying shit, hearing piss, fingernails seeping bile, pores dribbling blood, soles slopping off and out to meet a drain mid-floor ..." -Christopher Norris, author of Hunchback '88

1 edition

liannaedgelord reviewed Bonding by Maggie Siebert

This book fucked me up in the best way

5 stars

Hell of a thing, this one. Maybe not every story in here is five stars, but most of them stuck with me in a really serious way. In particular, "Every Day For The Rest Of Your Life" made me feel so understood and targeted and beautiful and horrible and complicated. It gave me an awful gender euphoria. Maybe my new favorite piece of short fiction. "Ammon" and "Opportunities" were really cool experiments with perspective and slowburn reveals. "Best Friend" and "Witches" genuinely upset me, which might not be what you want from horror, idk. "The Alumni Association" and "The Prime Minister" made me laugh in a collection that could have been unrelentingly bleak without them. The phrase "Specifically his dead penis" will be rotating in my mind for some time to come. Anyway, read this thing.

liannaedgelord

rated it

Nov 22