'The new collection of beautiful, strange and disarming short stories from the award-winning Aliya Whiteley, deftly unpeels the strangeness of everyday life with her trademark wit. Witness the future of farming in a new Ice Age, or the artist bringing life to glass; the many-eyed monsters we carry and the secret cities inside our bodies.'
I've read two Aliyah Whiteley books before From The Neck Up, and have found that her writing is a very unique, almost lyrical style, one that lends itself well to her unusual way of writing. This new book presents readers with a collection of sixteen short stories that I think give a good taste of what Aliya's writing is like, and shows how even when trying out different genres and themes there's something to her work that's so distinctly, and uniquely, hers.
The best way to describe this book is speculative. I know that's a term that is often used in conjunction with other genres, but Whiteley manages to write across so many different genres and themes in this book that this is really the best way to describe it as a whole. Whether it's a story that's leaning more towards horror, or is more obviously sci-fi, or one that seems to be only a few steps removed from our current world, the one thing that unites all of these stories is speculation.
Everything in this book is asking a question, whether that's wanting us to look at how we treat our planet, how we think of human lives, how we view love, sacrifice, or even mental illness. Whiteley seems to like challenging her readers, but in ways that don't feel confrontational, or like she's tying to make a point or teach a less. Instead, she simply presents her stories and her characters, and allows those events to lead the reader to a certain point, without them necessarily realising they've been made to thin about a difficult subject.
One of the downsides of a collection like this, however, is that not all of the stories feel as strong as the others. I'm not saying any of them are bad, as they're certainly no bad ones in this collection, but I've found that when work is being selected from the body of a single author there are sometimes examples that are so much stronger than the others it can lead to some of the stories feeling less effective.
Some of the stories in this collection that I feel are so good that they kind of overshadow some of the others include 'Into Glass', a strangely beautiful body horror story that touches on love, abuse, and sacrifice; 'Blessings Errupt', a eco-dystopia story that speculates on a possible future where we've begun to live with nature, but the sacrifices some people are having to make to keep that society going and the pain it causes them; 'From The Neck Up', an odd ghost like story featuring a severed head and a young woman learning to pursue her passions and the things in life that bring her joy; and 'Brushwork', which imagines a future where the elderly are employed in special farm domes to grow produce whilst the world experiences a second ice age outside.
'Brushwork' in particular stuck out to me as better than most of the other stories in the book due in part to it being the longest story in the book. It was more of a novella than a short story, and was longer than several of the others combined. It gave readers the chance to really get to know the characters, and spend time in that world. However, because it was the first story too it really felt out of place. I ended up expecting all of the stories in the book to be longer in length than they actually were because of the way the book began, and I was somewhat disappointing that they weren't all given the attention 'Brushwork' was.
I think that's perhaps my biggest criticism with the book, that I felt that I wanted more from the vast majority of these stories. I wanted to spend more time learning about these strange worlds what Whiteley had created, to see how these characters evolved and grew, and to have more of my questions answered. There are many stories here that felt like they could have gone on to become their own novel length fictions, and I'm a little sad they didn't.
Overall, there's a ton of stuff in this book to like. There are so many stories on offer here, of various different genres and themes that I think you'd be hard pressed to come away without liking at least one; or more realistically several. It's amazing to see how this author is able to turn their hand to so many different types of stories and make them all feel engaging and strange in some way, that they all end up drawing you in an wanting more.
If you're a long time fan of Aliya Whiteley you're going to love this book, and if you've never read any of her work before this book is definitely going to end with you wanting to read more of her work.
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