I read sooooo many short stories. I’ve spent the last six years reading a short story (almost) every day, and I appreciate a truly original, gripping tale. Puloma Ghosh’s debut collection, Mouth, with its well-crafted, weird, female-centered stories, filled me with joy.
I was won over by the opening story, Desiccation, about a strange, shut-off town, where men go “missing” when they reach a certain age. There’s another odd town in Leaving Things, which has been overrun by wolves, but one woman insists on sticking around.
I loved Anomaly, where a woman goes on a date with someone to a weird wormhole thing. The theme of holes in the universe is continued in Lemon Boy, where a girl meets a boy with lemon-colored hair at a party, where he thinks he’s seen his dead ex.
The final story, Persimmon, was probably my favorite. A girl prepares for her last day of freedom, before she is sacrificed to a tree.
There is such a wide variety of imagination on display here. All the stories in Mouth are truly original and exciting.
California Reading 