comfort me with apples catherynne valente

And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can’t quite meet her gaze… The locked basement she is never allowed to enter.

The look on her husband’s face when he comes back from a long business trip. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.īut sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Valente, for fans of Gone Girl and Spinning Silver Ī terrifying new thriller from bestseller Catherynne M. Opening line: The Following Agreement is made this first day of the first month between the members of the Arcadia Gardens Homeowners Association and the title-holders of 1 Cedar Drive.

If you want to feel creeped out (but not in a jump scare way) or made uncomfortable by a book, if you need something you want to devour in one sitting, then this is for you. Cat Valente is such a writer and so she not only delivered two vastly different books this year but also succeeded in making them both work incredibly well. The main character is the wife Adam had before Eve, because in this scenario Adam is also Bluebeard, keeping bits of his other wives in his basement END SPOILERS.It is the mark of a great writer that can give us one hopeful, heartwarming post-apocalyptic novella and a creepy what-the-hell-is-going-on type novella in the same year. I don’t think anybody disliked it, and there were a lot of people there.įor those wanting some spoilers to light their way: SPOILERS This is essentially a creation story reimagining bent into a satire.

But ultimately, I did like this, and I really enjoyed the book club discussion we had afterwards. I also historically have a hard time with allegory, and there’s a lot of that going on here. There was so much stuff shoved into this hundred page book it took me a day or so to form opinions about it beyond that it was weird, and that I felt disturbed in my brain.

This was marketed as SPOILERS a Bluebeard retelling END SPOILERS (at least that’s how I first heard about it) and the synopsis makes it seem like some sort of semi-fantastical suburban satire, and it sort of is that also, but those two things are really only side dishes to the main event, which I won’t talk about except in the spoiler tags below. Especially if you go in thinking you know what the main premise is, but you really don’t as it turns out, like I did. My initial reaction upon finishing Comfort Me With Apples was “wtf was this.” I’m not sure what I was going to rate it or say about it before my book club meeting, but something one of the other members said during the meeting sort of flipped a little switch in my brain and clarified my feelings and thoughts about it.

Comfort me with apples catherynne valente