The Rock Eaters Explores The Boundaries Of Emotion, Possibility And Longing knpr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from knpr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Penguin
Brenda Peynado wastes no time in yanking her reader into her stories – and into the burning issues that consume her. Her debut collection,
The Rock Eaters, demonstrate this superbly. Thoughts and Prayers and The Radioactives are the two tales that bookend
The Rock Eaters, and they kick off and conclude the collection with punchy yet lingering impact.
The opening of Thoughts and Prayers instantly magnetizes the topic of school shootings by folding in the presence of eerie angels with human faces and the bodies of birds; the opening of The Radioactives mashes immigration and farfetched technology into a deconstructed superhero narrative one that stirs the soul with justice and rage. Just as spectacularly, Thoughts and Prayers is a fantasy story, while The Radioactives is science fiction and within that bracket of genres, the author wields a righteous voice that s as frank as it is dreamlike.
Brenda Peynado’s debut book,
The Rock Eaters, a short-story collection that bounces around genres such as speculative fiction, science fiction and straight fiction, will definitely leave you deeply unsettled, though perhaps not always in a good way.
Peynado’s is a gifted, imaginative writer and I admit I was prepared to be blown away after reading the book’s introductory story, “Thoughts and Prayers,” a stunning, ironic piece about a world where angels perch on people’s roofs, their actual physical presence akin to cows as they chew “cud from the grasses and bugs they scavenged during the night,” while in the morning the people emerged from their houses to shout “thoughts and prayers” at them to prevent bad luck overtaking them. Centering around a young girl who lives in one of the most “blessed” houses who is best friends with another girl whose family’s angel is next to worthless and is continually beset by tragedy. When Rima’s kind, seemingly lucky o