A short decade of essays and fiction pieces about what it means to be other or an outsider or identity or — I’m not really sure what the prompt was for these essays precisely. I think it’s identity, maybe. That seems like a big enough umbrella to fit all these essays underneath.
And they aren’t all essays either. Both Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s and Hanna Krall’s submissions are fiction (or at least, intentionally read like fiction), and of course, with my love of narrative and difficulty following non-narrative arguments, those are the two that’ll probably stick with me (and not just because Gundar-Goshen’s story is very similar to a story idea I had a few years ago so it’s time to put on my tin-foil hat so she doesn’t steal any more of my ideas). But the white space in the snippets by Hanna Krall — I have put the only Hanna Krall book in the library on hold so I can read more from her. I suppose that’s the point of collections like these, hit or miss, it’s unlikely that all is a miss. So you find someone new you wouldn’t have found otherwise. The rest just sort of fades.
Life From Elsewhere by various authors went on sale June 21, 2016.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.