Publishers Weekly
07/13/2015
As Hopkinson (Sister Mine) acknowledges in the foreword, it’s difficult to take stories written on various subjects over the course of a decade and turn them into a unified whole. This collection struggles to find its footing while covering such broad topics as the apocalypse (“The Easthound”), possession (“The Smile on the Face”), and mythology (“Shift”). The stories all share a common thread of magic, which is often woven, whether subtly or blatantly, into the fabric of everyday reality, allowing characters to react to the strange or the impossible as it crosses into their world. Hopkinson also draws frequently on her Caribbean upbringing and heritage, and her characters’ voices are distinct and authentic, both in their speech patterns and in their ways of looking at their surroundings. Hopkinson’s fans will be delighted by these examples of her wide-ranging imagination. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
Los Angeles Public Library: Best of 2015 Fiction
Conversationalist: Best Books of 2015
Open Letters Monthly Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
Locus 2015 Recommended Reading List: Best Collection
Rock Your Reality Dope Female Authors to Get Into This Women’s History Month
BookRiot Most Influential Sci-Fi Books of the Past 10 Years
“Hopkinson's stories dazzle.”
—NPR
“The stories all share a common thread of magic, which is often woven, whether subtly or blatantly, into the fabric of everyday reality, allowing characters to react to the strange or the impossible as it crosses into their world. Hopkinson also draws frequently on her Caribbean upbringing and heritage, and her characters’ voices are distinct and authentic, both in their speech patterns and in their ways of looking at their surroundings. Hopkinson’s fans will be delighted by these examples of her wide-ranging imagination.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The power of Hopkinson’s stories lies in their capacity to help us reimagine our own movement through the world and to wonderfully innovate new trajectories for speculative fiction as a whole.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“The award-winning author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring returns with a collection of fantastical short fiction, assembling a decade’s worth of stories of magic and the supernatural intersecting with everyday life.”
—Barnes and Noble, Bookseller’s Pick
“There is something for everyone in this collection. Hopkinson manages to make a reader’s skin crawl in one story and smile in the next. It’s a mixture that keeps you reading just to see what she will come up with next. A great collection from a highly imaginative and insightful mind, Falling in Love with Hominids is a must read for fantasy and short story fans”
—Portland Book Review
“Hopkinson’s stories stack up well against their source of inspiration, but her voice is clearly her own, charged with deep feeling and vast imagination.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“The short fiction collection Falling In Love With Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson introduced me to speculative fiction with Black queer characters.”
—Wear Your Voice
“Daring, creative, and fantastically unique.”
—Read Diverse Books
“Every reader will surely find something to love, as this collection is often hilariously funny, deeply tragic, intensely engaging, and strongly steeped with fantastic elements.”
—Civilian Reader
“In this collection of luminous stories, Nalo Hopkinson writes with an observant intensity. . . .”
—World Literature Today
“Falling in Love with Hominids overflows with originality, beauty, and Hopkinson’s trademark depiction of human decency. . . .”
—Women's Review of Books
“Hopkinson does some beautiful things with the art of writing, her imagination is without bounds, and she challenges both readers and writers to go beyond what we see as the status quo. The book is filled with characters of colour, with LGBT characters, with characters who, one way or the other, are memorable and real and get to take part in some amazing stories.”
—Bibliotropic
“Every story feels like a perfectly formed separate entity, but pulling them together is the effortless blending of the fantastic and the mundane.”
—Book Riot, Best Books We Read in July
“A wonderful treat for Nalo Hopkinson fans and a fantastic introduction for new readers.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Yet another extraordinary collection of short stories that is well worth your time and rapt attention. The writing is beautiful, the message important, and its delivery is page-turning.”
—The Warbler
“A magical collection of short stories which brings the reader completely different and new worlds to explore.”
—A Universe in Words
“An entertaining and humane book that affirms why Junot Díaz refers to Hopkinson as “one of our most important writers.”
—Room Magazine
“I can’t wait to read more of [Hopkinson’s] work in the future because I loved the speculative worlds in this short story collection.”
—Paper Wanderer
“Nalo Hopkinson paints the places she knows in the way that Márquez embodies the soul of Central America, or the way Bradbury captures Illinois summers.”
—Fiction Foresight
“[U]nique and wonderful and disturbing. . . . Falling in Love with Hominids is at its heart a story of hope.”
—Books Without Any Pictures
“A pleasure from beginning to end.”
—Worlds Without End
“This is an outstanding collection that really gives insight into [Hopkinson’s] storytelling, the breadth and insight with which she writes.”
—The Conversationalist
“This is a fantastic collection that I encourage lovers of fantasy and science fiction to pick up.”
—The Illustrated Page
“After I finished this book, I just wanted to hug it to my chest and sigh contentedly.... If you have any interest at all in fantastical or magical realist short stories, if you like sharp humor or flawed and compelling characters, definitely pick this one up. It's one of my favourite reads this year.”
—Paper Blog
“Falling in Love with Hominids reveals a writer at the height of her powers.”
—The Canadian Science Fiction Review
“A re-invigoration at the sense of wonder about human experience.”
—Speculating Canada
“The variety and depth is amazing. Horror, fantasy, magic realism, and science fiction. A story or two that I’m sure mainstream editors might buy without noticing it’s not mainstream, the touch of the fantastic is so light and gentle, and yet absolutely there. In that way, and in no other way than being an excellent writer, Hopkinson resembles Le Guin. Go find this book and read it.”
—File 770
“All the stories display the various and eclectic writing skill Hopkinson contains in such ample amounts. The writing, too, is terrific.”
—Paper Wars
“[T]he entire book is wonderful. Definitely give it a shot. A+”
—Book Blather
“I think that many readers have been waiting for affirmative perspectives like these, perspectives that show, over and over again, that diversity is beautiful.”
—Strange Horizons
“There are such an excellent variety of stories . . . If you’re a sci-fi/fantasy fan there will almost definitely be something in this collection that catches your fancy.”
—Snap
“This brilliant short story collection has several stories with black women and girls as leads. These girls and women defend their village from invading European conquerors, have divine powers of creation, and overall epitomize Black Girl Magic, sometimes literally!”
—Read Diverse Books
“Not only a collection of beautifully written speculative prose, it takes the what-if-ness of the genre and expands it.”
—The Norwich Radical
