Publishers Weekly
10/05/2020
Schanoes reinterprets and unpacks old, familiar tales in this powerful debut collection of 13 speculative stories. The pieces vary in subgenre, including fabulism, historical fantasy, and surrealism, but all are united by common threads of revolution, female power, revenge, and trauma both historical and personal. “The Revenant,” told with a mild, distant tone that belies its deadly serious subject matter, reimagines the urban legend of Bloody Mary. In “Phosphorus,” a woman dying of “phossy jaw” joins a factory girls’ strike. The Shirley Jackson Award–winning title novella is the standout, following Deborah, a Jewish witch and healer, as she flees anti-Semitic violence in 19th-century Poland while being pursued by a jealous demon. Dark pacts, willful daughters, and young punks in fishnets abound, and the collection suffers somewhat from the limited range of perspectives, with a few of the pieces striking similar notes. But at their best, these stories are rousing, political, and visceral, even gut-churning. Fans of Kirsty Logan, Daniel Mallory Ortberg, or Catherynne M. Valente will find much to enjoy. Agent: Jennifer Udden, New Leaf Literary. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Schanoes reinterprets and unpacks old, familiar tales in this powerful debut collection.…These stories are rousing, political, and visceral, even gut-churning.”—Publishers Weekly
"History and fairy tales are reimagined, repurposed, and remixed in this intriguing debut story collection . . . from a writer of significant talent and promise."—Kirkus
"[A] heady mix of magic, myth, fantasy, and social commentary, from a politically left Jewish feminist perspective. . . . Schanoes’s collection is filled with girls and women burning — in rage, in fever, in passion — and fire as transformation, destruction, justice, and hope, fill these pages." — LA Review of Books
"Schanoes debuts a dreamy short story collection that plays with genre, combining literary fiction, fairy tales, and fantasy...Her haunting tales of revenge and anger and her fierce protagonists will enthrall readers." — The Millions' Most Anticipated
“From a fabulist immigration tale to a revenge story from 17th-century Germany, Burning Girls and Other Stories is full of genre-bending narratives you won't soon forget.”—Bustle
"This is one of my most anticipated releases of 2021, period. Schanoes compiles a collection of stories about women in the margins. Fierce stories, from historical fantasy to fairytales, that take inspiration from other fantasists, such as Karen Russell and Kelly Link. Such a collection will no doubt take its place alongside some of my favorite collections of all time, such as Link’s Get In Trouble and Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber." — Book Riot's 10 Speculative Short Story Collections to Enjoy in 2021
"This book is for those who like their fairy tales strong and dark. A beautifully written, sharply imaginative collection—stories of vengeance and fury, stories of wit and grit. Many pleasures and many surprises and highly recommended."—Karen Joy Fowler
"Veronica Schanoes is one of the most powerful voices in speculative fiction and has been for a very long time. Her work effortlessly blends the modern with the archetypal. It is constantly surprising, endlessly rich, and terribly needed."—Catherynne M. Valente
"Brilliant tales of enviable imagination, gracefully written, and with a strong feminist center. One of the best collections I’ve come across in recent years."—Jeffrey Ford
"The tales Veronica Schanoes tells are a heady brew. She blends radicalism and fairytale, vengeance and punk and feminism with angry grieving surrealism. She is inevitable and essential."—Roz Kaveney
"These tales are touching and haunting; their language both cutting and connecting; their female protagonists unforgettable—bleeding from thorns, pins, and needles."—Cristina Bacchilega, author of Postmodern Fairytales: Gender and Narrative Strategies
"Veronica Schanoes' imagination and artistry are on fire in her collection. . . . She draws on the deep, untapped potential of traditional tales and classic fantasy to inspire her own unique, compelling narratives. Subtly crafted, her stories are startling in their emotional, psychological, and social resonance."—Donald Haase, Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University
"[Mixes] startling documentary narratives with fantasy that address the plight of Jews who seek to change the world. Schanoes, a unique storyteller, is also committed to bringing about a more humane world through her original and provocative stories."—Jack Zipes, author of Grimm Legacies:The Magic Spell of the Grimms' Folk and Fairy Tales
Kirkus Reviews
2021-01-27
History and fairy tales are reimagined, repurposed, and remixed in this intriguing debut story collection.
Drawing deeply from history (particularly leftist, labor, women's, and Jewish history), folklore, fairy tales, and pop culture, Schanoes explores themes of historiography, queerness, duty, justice, and oppression. In the powerful "Among the Thorns," Ittele, a Jewish girl eschewing the trajectory typical for a 17th-century woman, dedicates herself instead—with intercession from an ancient, neglected deity—to taking revenge on the fiddler who was responsible for her father's humiliation and murder. In "Phosphorus," an Irish girl laboring in a London match factory falls ill with a ghastly disease but, thanks to a heartbreaking bargain, is able to see the workers' strike for better conditions through to the end. Despite this strong start, the collection begins to sag toward the middle, notably at the end of "Emma Goldman Takes Tea With the Baba Yaga." What begins as a captivating examination of the ways narrative choices, including state propaganda, affect perception and outcome, with the narrator imagining Goldman making a renewed commitment to revolution in the Baba Yaga's forest cottage following her disillusionment with the Bolshevik state, suddenly fizzles into a direct accounting of the United States' recent slide toward fascism. "Rats," a retelling of the calamitous relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spurgeon, again starts off compellingly, examining the essential lie at the heart of fiction and our impulse to impose narrative order on the chaos of life, only to fall apart in an unpalatable take on the inevitable end, pegging Lily (Nancy's stand-in) as not only responsible for her own murder, but desirous of it. Fortunately, things pick up again beginning with "Lily Glass," a piercing variation on "Snow-White and Rose-Red" about an early film starlet navigating a complex maze of anti-Semitism, homophobia, and repressed desire, and culminating with the masterful Shirley Jackson Award–winning title story, which follows a gifted young witch and her seamstress sister as they escape the 1906 Bialystok pogrom to hoped-for safety in New York.
An ambitious but uneven collection from a writer of significant talent and promise.
