Spider Love Song and Other Stories (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781946724205)

Nancy Au's debut collection is rich with scents, sounds, imaginative leaps, and unexpected angles of vision. These seventeen stories present the challenges facing characters whose inner and outer lives often do not align, whose spirits attempt flight despite dashed hopes and lean circumstances. Marginalized by race, age, and sexuality, they endeavor to create new worlds that honor their identities and their Chinese heritage.

Au excels at inhabiting the minds and hearts of children and the elderly. In the title story, Sophie Chu dresses daily in her increasingly shabby elephant costume to ensure her missing parents recognize her upon their return. In "The Unfed," a village elder seeks to revive, with her dimming magic, a mountain community struck by tragedy. "Louise" follows, with deceptive hilarity (involving a one-eyed duck), the nuanced give and take between May Zhou and Lai, dissimilar yet passionate partners considering parenthood. The volume also offers sparkling speculative work that taps into the strength of nature--fox spirits and fire beetles, swollen rivers and rippling clouds--to showcase the sometimes surreal transformations of Au's protagonists.

Spider Love Song and Other Stories treads the fault line that forms between lovers, families, friends, cultures--exposing injuries and vulnerabilities, but also the strength and courage necessary to recast resentment and anger into wonder and power. Au's lyrical style, humor, and tender attention to her characters' fancies and failings make this powerful debut a delight to read.


Author: Nancy Au
ISBN-10: 1946724203
ISBN-13: 9781946724205
Publisher: Acre Books
Language: English
Published: 09/15/2019
Pages: 184
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.50d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2019 pg. 82
Shelf Awareness 09/24/2019