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I tore through this book, and might just re-read it immediately, which is something I never do.

It starts out as a fantasy story that feels exceptionally weird because Chandrasekera's willing to do his world building / exposition very slowly. I kept going through a lot of confusion because the writing itself is just so beautiful. And then gradually as the exposition falls into place it becomes clearer that the book is at least partly a critique of religious fanaticisms and chauvinisms... but each time I felt I really had a handle on the book something in its world would shift - either the protagonist learning a new piece of his own story or a significant detail the the author waited until a dramatic moment to show the reader. Even the ending feels like another instance of that, and it is a relatively unclear ending, though it fits the whole mood of the book enough not to be frustrating.

To be clear: I like this kind of storytelling better than spending pages and pages on worldbuilding before anything happens, and all loose ends tied up by the conclusion. It just needs a damn good writer to make it work, and Chandrasekera is one. I also never felt like I was more confused than the protagonist himself, which I think is how the book managed not to fall into feeling like a cheap trick.

After reading it, I read up on the story of Rāhula, and realised that many more details in this book are clearly-intentional references to that than I'd picked up on. And I read some Sri Lankan history and realised that much of what felt like echoes of Myanmar or Israel were more direct references to specific aspects of Sri Lanka's civil war. Part of why I want to re-read is to have those things in mind, but I think it's also a strength of the book that it works as a more general allegory too. I think I would advise other readers to go in the same order as me: dive into the book first, and catch up on its references after.

#SFFBookClub

Wow. For one thing, it's very rare that I am consistently impressed with every story in a collection, even single-author ones. And it's a wonderfully varied collection too, in subject matter, mood, and form: everything from a two-page story that's actually satisfying to the title one which could have been published as a novella on its own. There are common themes about outsider perspectives and unexpected viewpoints, but a huge range of what those things actually mean. Many of the stories are clearly informed by the author being an intersex Jewish immigrant, but again that shows up in very different ways from one story to the next - this is not an author who just has one thing to say.

Content note: some of the stories have disturbing imagery and themes around abuse, body horror, and/or being trapped. There's a list of specific content notes at the back of the book - if those sort of themes could be a problem for you, it's worth flicking to that first.