WHILE THE WOMEN ARE SLEEPING by Javier Marias

5.5
Personal copy
About

Mirroring, ghosts, and doubles are all present in these haunting short stories by the celebrated Spanish author Javier Marías.He asks for the reader's kindness towards "The Life and Death of Marcelino Iturriaga" as it was written when he was 14 – but this is disingenuous on his part as it is a wonderful short story about a man talking after his death. Marías's narrators are usually male and experiencing some kind of identity crisis. In the title story, a man films his beautiful young girlfriend every day on the beach, while she preens herself in a mirror; in "Gualta", a man spots his double and instantly loathes him; in "A Kind of Nostalgia Perhaps", an old woman waits for the ghost of a national hero. Superb.I

I loved these short stories 

ALL THE NAMES THEY USED FOR GOD by Anjali Sachdeva

5.5

Random House
Spiegel & Brau
Literary fiction
North American Literature
Short Stories

About
Spanning centuries, continents, and a diverse set of characters, these alluringly strange stories are united by each character’s struggle with fate. In a secret, subterranean world beneath the prairie of the Old West, a homesteader risks her life in search of a safe haven. A workman in Andrew Carnegie’s steel mills is turned into a medical oddity by the brutal power of the furnaces—and is eventually revitalized by his condition. A young woman created through genetic manipulation is destroyed by the same force that gave her life.

Anjali Sachdeva demonstrates a preternatural ability to laser in on our fears, our hopes, and our longings in order to point out intrinsic truths about society and humanity. “Killer of Kings” starts with John Milton writing Paradise Lost and questions the very nature of power—and the ability to see any hero as a tyrant with just a change in perspective. The title story presents a stirring imagining of the aftermath of the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram that leaves us pondering what is lost when we survive the unsurvivable. And in “Pleiades,” genetically modified septuplets are struck by a mysterious illness that tests their parents’ unwavering belief in the power of science.

Like many of us, the characters in this collection are in pursuit of the sublime, and find themselves looking not just to divinity but to science, nature, psychology, and industry, forgetting that their new, logical deities are no more trustworthy than the tempestuous gods of the past. Along the way, they walk the knife-edge between wonder and terror, salvation and destruction. All the Names They Used for God is an entrancing work of speculative fiction that heralds Anjali Sachdeva as an invigorating, incomparable new voice.

My view
"ALL THE NAMES THEY USED FOR GOD" consists of twelve short stories. 
Anjali Sachdeva is an author with a tremendous gift, the gift of story telling.

Short stories are not my preferred read, yet I enjoyed her immense talent, wishing for one more story. I will certainty keep an eye on this author, be it Short Stories or a Novel should she decide this direction.

I have no favoured story, all shine!
"THE WORLD BY NIGHT" 5.5
"GLASS LUNG" 5.5
"LOGGING LAKE" 5.5
"Killer OF KINGS" 5.5
"ALL THE NAMES FOR GOD"
"ROBERT GREENMAN AND THE MERMAID" 5.5
"ANYTHING YOU MIGHT WANT" 5.5
"MANUS" 4.5
"PLAIADS" 5.5

I underlined much throughout every story, however until I have the the final copy I am unable to add to this review as requested by publisher.

Thank you NetGalley and Spiegel & Brau ( Random House) for a chance to read this advance reader copy.

THE OTHER LANGUAGE by Francesca Marciano

Pantheon
Available at your bookstore

Synopsis

The characters in the compelling stories novelist and screenwriter Francesca Marciano collects in The Other Language are displaced—both geographically and in matters of the heart. Mostly women, but a few men as well, they are educated, well-heeled and discontent, adrift in an ever-contracting world that has clouded the notion of home.

The title story—one of the finest—begins with an enticing Alice Munro-like premise: A 12-year-old Italian girl and her family vacation in a small Greek village in the wake of her mother’s mystery-shrouded death. There she substitutes one English brother for another as her object of affection, carrying the complicated memory through the years until adult truths clarify the meaning of the events. Another richly layered story, “The Presence of Men,” is built on a clash of cultures as a Roman woman, scarred by divorce, seeks refuge in a village in a remote corner of Italy. The inroads she makes into local acceptance are jarred when her Hollywood agent brother and his movie star client show up and upset the delicate balance. In “An Indian Soirée,” reminiscent of the atmospheric, incisive stories of the late Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a couple has come to the subcontinent for an extended sojourn, and in one the space of one morning their marriage falls apart.

A number of stories are set in Africa, where Marciano has lived. “The Club,” with the indomitable Mrs. D’Costa at its center, quietly explores class and race in post-colonial Kenya. “Big Island, Small Island” reunites two lost souls who realize it is impossible, indeed useless, to try to recreate the past. And “Quantum Theory,” set in Africa and New York, offers a bittersweet meditation on the significant difference between falling in love and being in love.

Many of these nine well-crafted and entertaining stories are built on chance encounters, and in Marciano’s assured hands the reader accepts the intervention of fate without question. These are stories about finding love in a fragile world, but even more, about all of the connections—past and present—that shape us and anchor us in place.