May We Shed These Human Bodies

Amber Sparks. Curbside Splendor (Ingram, dist.), $12 trade paper (148p) ISBN 978-0-9834228-7-7

Sparks’s debut story collection swirls with a Tim Burton-like whimsy. Ghosts nurse babies (“As They Always Are”), Death visits Earth as a New England prep (“Death and the People”), people evolve from trees (in the title story), and a girl, born in the land of the dead, is sent to Earth accompanied by a protective group of ghosts (“The Ghosts Eat More Air”). “You Will Be the Living Equation” describes a teenager’s attempts to cope with a friend’s suicide. This is much-traveled ground, but the story’s poignant insights are enlivened by the element of the supernatural and a second-person narration. The collection’s 30 stories, most no longer than three pages, are modern fables in which epiphanies replace moral lessons and tales unfold with Grimm-like wickedness. While the book’s shorter, more fantastic pieces are often little more than exercises in imagination, they provide an unnerving atmosphere in which the longer stories can languish and offer the primal enjoyment of not knowing what will happen next. As this energetic collection shows, Sparks isn’t afraid to take chances. (Oct.)

Reviewed on: 08/27/2012

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