Rate this book

There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (2009)

by Unknown(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0143114662 (ISBN13: 9780143114666)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Penguin Books Ltd

review 1: An interesting and eclectic collection of 'scary' short stories (how perfect that I read this around Halloween?) that reminds me of the narratives of Murakami and Kurosawa. Some stories I perceived better than the others (in other terms, some spoke to my interpretation of the world while others remained mute). I would say the selection in the Fairy Tales section was by far my favorite, and the cabbage baby story is probably one that I will remember for a long time. Overall I found the stories profound and inquisitive, albeit haunting and sometimes disturbing. The human experience is such a precious thing, so complex and confounding, yet when illuminated from certain angles the way it is here, it seems so glaringly obvious (in some cases) or hopelessly indeterminate (in oth... moreers). I think everyone will find something here that resonates with their experiences, and I see this as the sort of collection that reads differently every time you come back to it. I feel the stories I didn't get this time around I may get at a different time in my life. These are the kind of stories that read you as much as you read them.
review 2: Overall, strong work. The most chilling stories were those in which the source of the horror was an ordinary human, such as in the titular story. I mean...the Russian to English translation was a bit off at times, and the "neighbor" in the story was actually what we would call a flatmate or roommate in English. Two women share an apartment, and one tries to kill her roommate's baby with bleach. Uninterrupted horror. The mother's solution is very simple and extremely effective in the long run. In another, a family turns against its own small daughter because she has come down with a deadly and highly virulent illness. These stories are about casual, everyday cruelty, and they hit home in startling ways. On the other hand, this book also has a several stories that would have been frightening in the 80's, but that read like cheesy urban legends now. A woman's husband comes home from war and asks her to go out into the woods with him to bury the uniform he had to abandon there, and it turns out it was actually his ghost asking her to bury his body. That sort of thing. So not all of the stories can stand the test of time, but I think the ones that depict the darker side of human nature will always, always be frightening. less

Download links for: There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby

Advertising