Book description
A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first-generation experiences to xenophobia
What does it mean to be other? What does it…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Rock Eaters as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Short story collections are funny things: some are strong from start to finish, and some… read as if the author wrote all the other stories over the course of a weekend after one of their stories garnered public attention. No, I will not name names.
Peynado’s The Rock Eaters is a glowing example of the former. The collection spans genres: realist, science fiction, magical realist. What all the stories have in common is Peynado’s controlled hand and breadth of imagination, not to mention her keen insights into what it’s like to exist in the real world, a world fraught with…
From Rita's list on The best books if you find genre boundaries kind of silly.
Rock Eaters broke me out of a reading slump and was the most exciting discovery for me since Her Body and Other Parties.
It’s one of those collections where, after finishing each story, I thought, “I wish I had written that!” My favorites include “The Stones of Sorrow Lake,” about a town where residents grow a rock in their bodies in response to their first grief, and “Thoughts and Prayers,” a devastating story where strange angels appear on rooftops after a school shooting.
Like Machado, Peynado writes in a range of genres that expands to sci-fi and speculative…
From Jacqueline's list on The best magical realism books by women writers.
If you love The Rock Eaters...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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