Souvenirs
In Andrew Colarusso and Karen An-hwei Lee’s collaborative story collection Souvenirs, art begets art.
These imaginative stories are inspired by sources including Emily Dickinson’s black cake recipe, a David Bowie song, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, the pioneer plaques from NASAs Pioneers 10 and 11, and several poems. Some are whimsical, fabulist fictions; others riff on faith and the afterlife. Whatever approach they take, the entries are unexpected and inventive.
The stories cut across time, death, and universes, as when a dead woman sends her sister a much-needed message. In another story, an author has a snippy conversation with a god he put to paper. Elsewhere, the mere bite of an apple can convey boundless information, and an ancient archivist holds two precious items in her sleeves: a goat’s hair brush that continues to grow for a time, and an ink stone. These detail-initiated explorations trend lyrical, surreal, narrative, or some amalgamation of these forms.
In the lovely story “Incunabula I,” descriptions of being carried as a small child, realizing the strength and warmth of the adult body, encapsulate what a child, and then an adult, might imagine adulthood to be, showing why adults might still long for childhood. This work is done in the course of a paragraph. And “Black Jade” reads like poetry, with rich sensory information that’s used to imagine what the seaweed brushing the underside of the boat might be. Rarely do the stories end with a concrete conclusion; instead, they finish with suggestions, as opposed to finalities.
Full of unexpected twists and poetic language, the dreamlike short stories of Souvenirs reward rereading and reimagining; they ride lines between prose poetry and fabulist fiction.
Reviewed by
Camille-Yvette Welsch
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
