Amber Sparks

Feminism fuels fantasy in this genre-busting collection by "master of the fantastic" (Roxane Gay) Amber Sparks.

Stories and Other Revenges

And I Do Not Forgive You

Alexa M

"but in petty times like these, we must do what we can to keep our hurts at bay. we must take our tiny revenges."

pretty sure this is my first short story collection wow??? really enjoyed my time reading this, obviously some stories were better than others but i think i am satisfied with an overall 4 rating!

Ana Hein

Emily Perkovich

This is one of the most consistent short story collections I have ever read. Every single one was so poetic and magical.

Laura

It’s rare that a writer who was never particularly famous becomes worse at writing instead of better. I loved The Unfinished World, even if I had never been particularly feminististic, so to speak. But those stories were much more diverse, and they dealt with more interesting, exciting topics than men=bad, women=good, an equation that sums up Because I Do Not Forgive You. Although, even the stories that I did not like from The Unfinished World were bearable because of Sparks lyrical, evocative writing, which was largely absent from Because I Do Not Forgive You. In fact, I have not read a book that has managed to date itself so quickly, and I predict in two years, this short story collection will come across as just as fresh as a bottle of milk left in the pantry for about as long. I rolled my eyes through the hashtags and text speak, despite being a young person guilty of using the same acronyms in my daily life. It’s been a week, and I still have not been able to get the bad taste of “In Which Athena Designs a Video Game with the Express Purpose of Trolling Her Father” out of my mouth. 

Throughout this collection, I found myself thinking that these stories reminded me of something. It was not until reading a Goodreads review that it occured to me that it was reminiscent of The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s masterful collection of fairytale retellings, requiring reading for anyone fairytale lover (fairyphile?). I don’t even like retellings of anything, least of all fairytales and I adored it. But there was something more substantial behind Carter’s retellings, perhaps a knowledge of or deep appreciation for the source material that Sparks lacks. It’s been months since I read The Bloody Chamber and I have not gotten the titular Bluebeard retelling out of my head, but I’ve already forgotten Sparks’ Catskin retelling, to the point where I can’t even remember the title and had to check again what it was (A Place for Hiding Precious Things). The titles of the stories are better than the stories themselves, by the way. I think of a remark I once heard disparaging The Smiths, about how their song titles are better than their actual music. 

Something that I really disliked about Because I Do Not Forgive You that was, however, evident in her other works is her irritating need to speak for other women. In her wildly inaccurate, even by retelling standards, rendition of The Rape of the Sabine Women (You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women) (And, for the record, the word “rape” in the context of the Sabine women does not mean what it does now. It was more analogous to “abduction” hence the rape of Persphone and the rape of Ganymede), Sparks makes it out like all women relate to the Sabine women and that they all long for a world without men. I am a woman and I certainly don’t long for a world without men- especially as a straight woman, though I’m sure many lesbians have fathers, brothers, sons, and nephews they’d mourn if all men vanished suddenly. And, hell, even friends, because I’m told women can be friends with men. Frankly, I would be happy with forgetting about the Sabine women if remembering them meant genocide of 50% of the planet. 

Another thing- I am not usually bothered by very short short stories. I’m okay with short stories being a couple of pages at most as long as they seem complete. Her first collection was filled with very short stories that I adored. Even in this collection, I appreciated certain short stories that were a couple pages long- “Our Geographic History”, “A Short and Slightly Speculative History of Lavoisier’s Wife” (a breath of fresh air compared to the other man-bashing stories, though she still must sneak in a few digs) and, the triumphant king (or queen, or whatever) of this collection “Tour of the Cities We Have Lost”. Some are blessedly short (looking at you, In Which Athena Designs a Video Game with the Express Purpose of Trolling Her Father, a story that will haunt me in all the wrong ways until the end of time as the worst thing my eyes have ever experienced). Most of the flash-fiction-y stories in this collection, though, feel as if they were done with an editor’s deadline breathing down her neck. “We Were a Storybook Back Then” is something akin to a story I wrote in tenth grade and no, that’s not a compliment. “Rabbit by Rabbit” had potential, but it could have been so much better with a little more love put into it. “Through the Looking Glass”, “The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines” “When the Husband Grew Wings” (like a worst version of that Margaret Atwood poem They Eat Out), and “A Wholly New and Novel Act, with Monsters” all should have been thrown out or at least heavily edited. Ironically, in some cases the short stories go on for much longer than was really necessary, too. “Everyone’s a Winner in Meadow Park” was a “please God end this soon” kind of story, along with “A Place for Hiding Precious Things”. But then, I expected that, because Sparks does not do too well in the long form. “Death Deserves All Caps” should have been thrown out by any self-respecting editor regardless of length, in the very least because it stuck out like a sore thumb and ruined the flow of the collection. Save the bullet-pointed lists for hack journalism and keep that shit out of literature. 

And yet, I did not find every short story in this collection offensive. I loved “Tour of the Cities We Have Lost”, it was a beautiful work of prose and I enjoyed the imagery of it. “We Destroy the Moon” was a perfectly passable piece of apocalyptic literature, even with those infernal hashtags. “The Eyes of Saint Lucy” was okay. Other than that, the rest of the stories, even the ones I liked when I read them, left my mind the minute I turned the page. 

In conclusion, read The Bloody Chamber. Or The Unfinished World. Both, I’m sure, you’ll have a much better time with than Because I Do Not Forgive You.

And I Do Not Forgive You Stories and Other Revenges

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