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2023 Locus Award for Best Collection (nominee)
Our Fruiting Bodies collects stories of old growth and fresh decay, of stubborn rebirth and the faint but nonimaginary paths connecting life and nonlife.
From the sharp, sweet confessional of their Peter Pan-inspired “Awfully Big Adventure,” through the melting ambitextualities of “Just Us” — from the early, dizzy-eyed quest at the heart of “Looking for Lilith” through the newly unfurling tendrils that pierce the grounds of “I Being Young and Foolish” — Nisi Shawl’s search for the power of fiction’s truth puts pure, precious gifts right here, right in your hands, ripe and ready for reading.
Advance Praise
Nisi Shawl’s Our Fruiting Bodies is a wilderness of untamed magic to explore, ever changing underfoot, beauty thorned and fertile with meaning, nurtured by the most talented of keepers. Shawl trusts their readers to be attuned to the mysteries of the imagined, rather than sated by formula or convention.
—Indrapramit Das, author of The Devourers
Review
Shawl (Everfair) creates a fantastical and sometimes unsettling tapestry with these 18 wild flights of fancy. Several of these stories call back to older tales; “Salt on the Dance Floor” and “The Tawny Bitch” have echoes of “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” respectively, while “She Tore” follows Wendy Darling and other familiar characters through life after Neverland. Among the standouts are “Street Worm,” “Queen of Dirt,” and “Conversion Therapy,” all about a girl named Brit who discovers that the world teems with dangerous invisible entities. Throughout the linked narratives, Brit comes quite literally into her power and helps other young Black kids like herself find their own. “Vulcanization” and “Cruel Sistah” shift the collection into horror, bringing an unsettling edge as the characters of both stories encounter ghosts that have sprung from their misdeeds. Less memorable are “Big Mama Yaga’s,” about an unusual architect, and the WWI-set “A Beautiful Stream,” which lack the dynamism of the other tales. “Just Between Us,” the mysterious and winding tale of Dolores, Little Girl, and the dead women that keep appearing in their house, ends the anthology on a strong note. Rich in diversity and imagination, this will delight any speculative fiction reader.
Publishers Weekly, Nov. 2022
Genre: Horror
From the sharp, sweet confessional of their Peter Pan-inspired “Awfully Big Adventure,” through the melting ambitextualities of “Just Us” — from the early, dizzy-eyed quest at the heart of “Looking for Lilith” through the newly unfurling tendrils that pierce the grounds of “I Being Young and Foolish” — Nisi Shawl’s search for the power of fiction’s truth puts pure, precious gifts right here, right in your hands, ripe and ready for reading.
Advance Praise
Nisi Shawl’s Our Fruiting Bodies is a wilderness of untamed magic to explore, ever changing underfoot, beauty thorned and fertile with meaning, nurtured by the most talented of keepers. Shawl trusts their readers to be attuned to the mysteries of the imagined, rather than sated by formula or convention.
—Indrapramit Das, author of The Devourers
Review
Shawl (Everfair) creates a fantastical and sometimes unsettling tapestry with these 18 wild flights of fancy. Several of these stories call back to older tales; “Salt on the Dance Floor” and “The Tawny Bitch” have echoes of “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” respectively, while “She Tore” follows Wendy Darling and other familiar characters through life after Neverland. Among the standouts are “Street Worm,” “Queen of Dirt,” and “Conversion Therapy,” all about a girl named Brit who discovers that the world teems with dangerous invisible entities. Throughout the linked narratives, Brit comes quite literally into her power and helps other young Black kids like herself find their own. “Vulcanization” and “Cruel Sistah” shift the collection into horror, bringing an unsettling edge as the characters of both stories encounter ghosts that have sprung from their misdeeds. Less memorable are “Big Mama Yaga’s,” about an unusual architect, and the WWI-set “A Beautiful Stream,” which lack the dynamism of the other tales. “Just Between Us,” the mysterious and winding tale of Dolores, Little Girl, and the dead women that keep appearing in their house, ends the anthology on a strong note. Rich in diversity and imagination, this will delight any speculative fiction reader.
Publishers Weekly, Nov. 2022
Genre: Horror
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