as a whole: these are stories about fragile morals, predation, codependency, faulty thought processes, "love/hate" and "hate/love" and sometimes love and hate separately (but perhaps hard to distinguish at first)

individual stories:

"the corn maiden"--interesting narration style and POV maneuvering, all effectively conveying that something is wrong with our would-be killer, but nobody can pinpoint what. the nods to the violent and morbid strain of pre-smartphone internet culture (my native country) give a sense of verisimilitude. there's a lot of layers in this story that reward a reread

"beersheba"--emotionally accurate to the experience of dealing with someone with power over you who is very sure about you and will not hear otherwise. this one felt like it needed a little more time in the toaster oven but the pacing is about perfect

"nobody knows my name"--a girl's jealousy of her new baby sister goes wrong. strong piece of domestic horror with a gothic fairy tale atmosphere from a well-executed child POV. my second favorite in the collection

"fossil-figures"--sort of a miniature epic of a pair of polar opposite twin brothers and how the power (im)balance between them changes from the womb all the way to their deaths. really well-crafted and my favorite one

"death-cup"--another story about polar opposite twin brothers. the tension is present from the beginning, but some pacing issues make it deflate a little until it starts ratcheting back up. worth reading anyway for the rising intensity of the narrator's emotional turmoil

"helping hands"--takes way too long to get on the road to where it's headed and the ending was ??? for my dumb ass. when i got to the end i thought flannery o'connor could've written it in parallel universe, like it's an alternate version of "a good man is hard to find," but i don't really like flannery o'connor and that might be why i didn't get much out of this one

"a hole in the head"--contains the goriest sequence in this book. i'm hard to disgust with words alone but she really painted a picture. however, a lot of unanswered questions are raised, the most important of which is why he changes his mind at a crucial point. JCO loves to leave things ambiguous but wound up leaving a few too many things unclear

if you like feeling wrongfooted by short fiction, or you enjoy mental illness lit-horror, check this collection out

The corn maiden and other nightmares

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The corn maiden and other nightmares (2011)

The corn maiden and other nightmares (2011)

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