Mini Book Review: Jagannath
Karin Tidbeck is a Swedish author who's been publishing short stories in her native language for about ten years. In 2012, she released her first short story collection in English, called Jagannath. It's a short book, and most of the stories are fairly brief as well, but she manages to pack a lot into that small space. At first I assumed that the title was a Swedish word, but Wikipedia informs me that it's one of the deities in the Hindu pantheon, considered to be an aspect of Vishnu or Krishna.
Among the stories, my favorites were "Brita's Holiday Village" and "Miss Nyberg and I." In the former, the main character is a writer staying at a resort in the off-season. After noticing some unusually large chrysalises or pupae hanging under the eaves of the cottages, she begins to have a series of eerie dreams. In the latter, the main character's roommate has a habit of buying packets of unknown mixed seeds from a gardening catalogue, planting them in pots on their balcony, and seeing what random plants grow from them. One of them grows something very odd indeed.
Most of the stories in this book have very unique premises, including the title story and "Pyret" (which is written as a scholarly article about a fictional creature, much like Jorge Luis Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings). Some others draw on Scandinavian folklore, and these also are enchanting. I've always enjoyed folklore and fairy tales, so I really liked "Reindeer Mountain" (which deals with the Scandinavian equivalent of the Sidhe/Fair Folk) and "Some Letters from Ove Lindstrom" (in which the main character's mother is gradually hinted at to have been such a being).
Overall, these stories are really imaginative, with a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere. I definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a good collection of speculative fiction.
Among the stories, my favorites were "Brita's Holiday Village" and "Miss Nyberg and I." In the former, the main character is a writer staying at a resort in the off-season. After noticing some unusually large chrysalises or pupae hanging under the eaves of the cottages, she begins to have a series of eerie dreams. In the latter, the main character's roommate has a habit of buying packets of unknown mixed seeds from a gardening catalogue, planting them in pots on their balcony, and seeing what random plants grow from them. One of them grows something very odd indeed.
Most of the stories in this book have very unique premises, including the title story and "Pyret" (which is written as a scholarly article about a fictional creature, much like Jorge Luis Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings). Some others draw on Scandinavian folklore, and these also are enchanting. I've always enjoyed folklore and fairy tales, so I really liked "Reindeer Mountain" (which deals with the Scandinavian equivalent of the Sidhe/Fair Folk) and "Some Letters from Ove Lindstrom" (in which the main character's mother is gradually hinted at to have been such a being).
Overall, these stories are really imaginative, with a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere. I definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a good collection of speculative fiction.