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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 mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart?
These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado's strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their "thoughts and prayers" will protect them from the world's violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. "The Great Escape" tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she's hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded.
With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity.
Genre: Science Fiction
What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart?
These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado's strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their "thoughts and prayers" will protect them from the world's violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. "The Great Escape" tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she's hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded.
With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity.
Genre: Science Fiction
Praise for this book
"What a smart and intriguing writer I've just 'discovered'--though from the impressive list of credits on the title page, I can see that others have been luckier, sooner. Brenda Peynado's The Rock Eaters is adazzle with alluring stories, flights of fancy that don't just dissolve into cleverness or parse the world neatly into cliche or categories. The stories help us think through situations all around us in "the real world" in new, captivating ways. What I most admire is the moral imagination of these stories, never nudging, never obvious, but subtle and unsettling. Peynado is a writer willing to cross literary borders: magical realism, fable, parable, fiction, nonfiction--she erases those limiting storytelling parameters and her stories soar." - Julia Alvarez
"This book is a giant. What staggering reach and ambition Brenda Peynado's stories have: here are aliens, tortured superhumans, angels, sufferings literalized as stones, ritualized drownings, enchanted sleeps, the hauntings of home, all rendered with the kind of power that sweeps us effortlessly from exhilaration to despair and back again. The Rock Eaters is the work of an imagination that brooks no limits, that claims, masterfully, all territories as its own. I'm in awe of this book. It's one of the most thrilling debuts I've read in years." - Clare Beams
"The Rock Eaters is a book of wonders-- of aliens and floating children and sorrows as heavy as stones, yes. But more than that, Peynado is a mischievous trickster, an elegant conjurer, and an unflinching surgeon of the human heart as she speaks to us of longing, and rage, and loss, and wanting with freshness and fervor. A tremendously smart book full of art, and full of playfulness too." - C J Hauser
"The Rock Eaters is vicious and beautiful, full of characters who will refuse to leave you at peace. Both painfully realistic and mind-bendingly fantastical, these stories capture the sense of displacement that comes with recognizing who we really are. Read it now, and see for yourself." - Annalee Newitz
"I love Brenda Peynado's big, beautiful imagination and the way her stories open up whole universes of possibility in only a few vivid pages. She is a magical mindbender--in conversation with Karen Russell and Margaret Atwood--who helps us understand the troubling issues of our world through a speculative lens. The Rock Eaters will put a spell on you." - Benjamin Percy
"This book. This beautiful, fierce, tender, aching, and glorious book. The Rock Eaters has the range, depth, art, and humanity that is short fiction at its peak. These are stories that demand you sit and breathe after finishing. From rocks that hold sorrow to hands and arms that stretch forever, Peynado's voice is singular. An extraordinary collection." - Erika Swyler
"A stunning debut collection comprised of provocative stories that are oddly healing and horizon-expanding. An exciting new voice." - Jeff VanderMeer
"This book is a giant. What staggering reach and ambition Brenda Peynado's stories have: here are aliens, tortured superhumans, angels, sufferings literalized as stones, ritualized drownings, enchanted sleeps, the hauntings of home, all rendered with the kind of power that sweeps us effortlessly from exhilaration to despair and back again. The Rock Eaters is the work of an imagination that brooks no limits, that claims, masterfully, all territories as its own. I'm in awe of this book. It's one of the most thrilling debuts I've read in years." - Clare Beams
"The Rock Eaters is a book of wonders-- of aliens and floating children and sorrows as heavy as stones, yes. But more than that, Peynado is a mischievous trickster, an elegant conjurer, and an unflinching surgeon of the human heart as she speaks to us of longing, and rage, and loss, and wanting with freshness and fervor. A tremendously smart book full of art, and full of playfulness too." - C J Hauser
"The Rock Eaters is vicious and beautiful, full of characters who will refuse to leave you at peace. Both painfully realistic and mind-bendingly fantastical, these stories capture the sense of displacement that comes with recognizing who we really are. Read it now, and see for yourself." - Annalee Newitz
"I love Brenda Peynado's big, beautiful imagination and the way her stories open up whole universes of possibility in only a few vivid pages. She is a magical mindbender--in conversation with Karen Russell and Margaret Atwood--who helps us understand the troubling issues of our world through a speculative lens. The Rock Eaters will put a spell on you." - Benjamin Percy
"This book. This beautiful, fierce, tender, aching, and glorious book. The Rock Eaters has the range, depth, art, and humanity that is short fiction at its peak. These are stories that demand you sit and breathe after finishing. From rocks that hold sorrow to hands and arms that stretch forever, Peynado's voice is singular. An extraordinary collection." - Erika Swyler
"A stunning debut collection comprised of provocative stories that are oddly healing and horizon-expanding. An exciting new voice." - Jeff VanderMeer
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