Should I Read This: Yes
Book Seller Link (non-affiliate, but I do know the owner): Every Galaxy a Circle a book by Chloe Clark - Bookshop.org US
Author’s Website: Chloe N. Clark
Disclaimer: I received an ARC (Advanced Review Copy) of this book from the author. I do not know the author personally; I just saw her mentioning she had a new collection coming out in January but, unlike most books reviewed here, I did not pay for this one myself.
Every Galaxy a Circle by Chloe N Clark is a short story collection largely focused on loss. The stories themselves come in a wide variety of genres, though they almost all have a science fiction flavor. These are not what I think of as plot stories. These stories are focused less on what happened and why it happened than on the impact of what happened. This is not to say that the stories do not have momentum or that nothing happens in any story, only that the important part of the story is almost never the action. The point of the story is almost never illustrated, with one particularly moving exception, by the action. Rather, the weight of the story is carried by the emotions of the characters or the situation they find themselves in. This is a collection very much focused on the interior of our lives, not the actions we take.
Each story has some connection to loss. They are ruminations on how we go forward when we have lost the most important things to us, or whether moving forward is the right choice after all. They ask what we owe the survivors or as compared to what we owe ourselves. They demand to know how we choose to support our community or, in one story, how we choose to not support our community. How we deal with loss or refuse to deal with loss ties all the stories together.
Not every story works, of course. Some of them are horror, a genre I do not like. One of them is so focused on the idea that it forget to do anything interesting with the idea or the characters. But there are far more compelling stories than the one or two misses. More often than not, I found myself caught up in the work and I often found myself thinking about the piece after I had put it down. The author also does a good job of making each character fit the piece. Often in story collections you can see that authors tend to write the same few characters over and over. not here. The characters seemed distinct and appropriate to the stories.
This is a collection worth reading, in my opinion. It is well written with a coherent theme and while all of the stories are not to my taste, most of them moved me or left me thinking or both. And I don’t think that is the sign of good work.
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