Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories

before i picked up tender is the flesh, i had not finished a book since probs like 2017🧐 19 claws and a black bird marks my 50th read of the year. i love little coincidences like this.I also love the way @agustinabazterrica fills my entire being with dread and disgust and despair in just a few pages. A few of her stories in this collection, I have already shared with my friends because i cannot shake them from my being.Be sure to read up on trigger warnings as some stories cover some hard topics. My favorite of the collection were:🐰 Roberto- teacher finds out student has a pet rabbit🛸 Anita and Happiness-man falls for a strange woman🖼️ The Slowness of Pleasure- woman connects to an art piece before herI pre-ordered this book when it was first announced and I am so glad I did because this is one of my favorite collections i’ve read this year.thank you @netgalley and @scribnerbooks for this ARC

I loved Tender is the Flesh so was thrilled to start reading Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird. Although I didn’t love all the stories, a couple stuck out for me.Anita and Happiness was a short little tale about a man who starts to date a strange woman. He fantasizes that she might be an alien sent to earth to spy.Dishwasher is about a woman who harbors strange thoughts (is my ashtray a living thing?) and goes to see a doctor to see if there’s something wrong with her. My favorite part of this story is the secondary character, Carrie, and the hilarious descriptions of her. I feel like we all have a friend like that.Although a lot of the stories were hit or miss for me, there were a couple gems thrown in.

Love the author and pre-ordered press book but I think she tried too hard. There are sentences that are a paragraph long. Just feels forced in an effort to be profound. Super bummed.

I’ve had Tender is the Flesh on my TBR for a while now, after having it recommended to me by a long-time friend. It’s still there, and I think I’ll be bumping it up a little higher on the list following reading this collection of short stories by Bazterrica.Some of the stories fell flat for me, which I expected. I don’t go into a collection expecting to be enraptured by all of the stories. I’d say about fifty percent of them kept my interest, and the others I speed-skimmed to get the main points.The stories that stuck out to me enough to highlight portions were: Unamuno’s Boxes, Dishwasher, Earth, and Hell.The stories that I enjoyed reading were: A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound, Candy Pink, A Hole Hides a House, Mary Carminum, and The Solitary Ones.I think all of the aforementioned stories offer interesting glimpses into the overarching topics that they’re addressing. For example, Unamuno’s Boxes and A Hole Hides a House offer different ways to view serial killers and trafficking situations. By me saying that, I mean that they offer a more abstract (but oddly relatable at times) lens. I’ve definitely been in situations where I dream up scenarios for people I don’t know and are either proven right or wrong (Unamuno’s Boxes). And I think that A Hole Hides a House offers a look into what was previously (and currently in some places) deemed as an acceptable practice (having child brides) and how... unhelpful someone could feel in that situation as a third party observer. As well as how destroying it could be for the victim in that case.The remaining stories didn’t elicit any sort of reaction from me, but that’s not to say that they aren’t going to be interesting and captivating to someone else.I think this book could benefit from a more thorough trigger warning list, although I know that the majority of those who enjoy reading horror and horror adjacent genres more or less know what to expect from Bazterrica’s work (especially if they’re read TItF already). As someone who will read just about anything, I can imagine someone picking this up and not really knowing what they’re signing up for if this is their introduction to the genre and/or author.Again I would like to thank NetGalley, Scribner, and Agustina Bazterrica for the opportunity to read this prior to being published. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity.

Thanks so much to Scribner and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this short story collection.3.5 stars. Like most short story collections, I enjoyed some of these stories more than others. The ones I enjoyed most were "A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound," "The Wolf's Breath," and my favorite, "The Slowness of Pleasure." There are a few themes that ran through the book: death/suicide, child molestation, and observation/gaze being the most obvious to me. However, what unified these stories to me was not the morbid topics they explored but the surreal yet specific descriptions they contained. Bazterrica writes such vivid imagery that even though some of these stories were so surreal I had a hard time understanding what was happening, images from them have stuck with me. The writing is so atmospheric in some of these stories I got chills. And yet, after reading some of these (maybe around half of them) I felt duped-- like I was strung along with this beautiful imagery and then it just got really weird and ended, or in some cases the ending felt obvious in a way that detracted from the tension that had built. There were a few bangers, for sure, but I wanted more. Another thing I liked about this collection was that, unlike many short story collections, I didn't feel like the stories bled together. They each felt unique, even reading them back to back in a couple of sittings. Overall, I enjoyed reading this but I wouldn't say it's on par with Tender is The Flesh. I think readers who enjoy surrealism and experimental horror will enjoy this. Specifically, readers who enjoy the short stories of Leonara Carrington, Amparo Davila, and Samanta Schweblin I think would love these. I am still eager to read what Bazterrica writes next, I think their longform fiction is just more up my alley!

Some stories were interesting and others not. I was left feeling that these were all ideas for a full length book and none every made it but because of Tender is the Flesh they were put out as a collection to keep momentum by the publisher / author.