Rose Keating’s debut short story collection, Oddbody features macabre body horror tales with funny, dark and unexpected twists and turns.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Simon & Schuster
Publisher: Short Stories, Horror, Literary Fiction, Speculative Fiction
Review in one word: Macabre
The title Oddbody is a strong signal about what lies between the covers as this collection of short stories: macabre body horror with funny and unexpected twists and turns. In the title story, a woman navigates a codependent relationship with a ghost. In “Squirm,” a daughter must tend to her father who is a man-sized squishy worm devouring himself from the inside out. If this sounds super weird…well it really is…but in a fascinating kind of way I can guarantee you!
“Pineapple” introduces a woman who makes the startling choice to have feather wings surgically attached to her back. In “Eggshells,” a waitress gives birth to an egg during her breakfast shift. These narratives are weird, fun, playful forms of body horror that anyone who loves weird fiction will savour and really love. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like this, and it’s a unique and fresh take on the weird that draws me in here.
The overarching theme of Oddbody is the body itself—as a corporeal site of horror, desire, transformation, and liberation. Keating puts a powerful lens on the body anxieties that women and men have and she’s brutally honest and creepy in a way about it all. The stories are vividly rendered and enjoyable. I found this collection to be masterfully crafted, funny and so much fun to read! I would highly recommend you read it.
Rose Keating is a writer from Waterford, Ireland. She is a recipient of the Curtis Brown Prize and the Marian Keyes Young Writer Award. This collection Oddbody is a bold and surreal descent into a strange netherworld with characters who are grotesque, strange and the tender all at once. I highly recommend this collection if you want to disappear into strange corporeal places you never imagined existed!
Content Catnip 