Nineteen Claws And A Black Bird - Blog Posts

NINETEEN CLAWS AND A BLACK BIRD by AGUSTINA BAZTERRICA (A REVIEW)

quickly: a collection of short stories where death and endings are the main characters (people falling from the sky / predacious teachers / taxi driver serial killers / breaking up / psychiatrist offices / father-killing daughters / devious cats / dead people on the moon / laughing at funerals / eating to feel / ceiling holes / caged birds / suburban bands / men in dark tunnels).

This is a strange collection of stories that I really wanted to love, but having read it, can’t wait to return. The writing leans freely into surrealist mystery, horror, and romance. Death seems to be the primary meditation, but there are also streaks of feminist and patriarchal struggles, conflicts between life and death, and questions of fate.

Most of the stories had amazing setups with promising openings. Unfortunately, the bizarre plotting and exposition often washes the stories out, with almost all of them ending with unsatisfactory conclusions. It felt like the last few V/H/S movies… montages of moments that are merely emotions and feelings, but not true stories.

Only one story, in particular, will stay with me… Earth. A daughter’s hasty reaction to her father’s temperament draws dire consequences for her mother and herself. Another, maybe, was Mary Carminum, about two devious men who have the tables turned on them by their dates. The rest of them are lost in a sea of metaphors, similies, and Rupi Kaur-esque poeticism.

★ ★