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Fresh Dirt from the Grave
Fresh Dirt from the Grave | Giovanna Rivero
4 posts | 1 read | 1 to read
Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and sciencethis is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet. In Fresh Dirt from the Grave , a hillside is an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty. It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Riveros short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in a womens prison and murders, housefires, and poisonings abound, but so does the persistent bravery of people trying to forge ahead in the face of the world. They are offered cruelty, often, indifference at best, and yet they keep going. Rivero has reworked the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism, and found in the wound their humanity and the possibility of hope.
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Bookwomble
Fresh Dirt from the Grave | Giovanna Rivero
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I was mistaken in thinking Giovanna Rivero's stories were of the horror genre, though some of the themes, especially the first two stories, are horrific and terrifying, as the blurb mentions.
It's hard to sum them up, but if I say that they would be good material for David Lynch or Guillermo del Toro to adapt to film, that gives a sense of their disturbing, unsettling character.
The stories are set in Bolivia, Canada and USA, featuring ⬇️½

Bookwomble ... Bolivian MCs, mostly women, and indigenous people and traditions are prominent, as are themes of immigration and translocation. A disquieting 4⭐😰
I've given some CWs in a previous post tagged to the book, which are the tip of the iceberg.
1mo
34 likes1 comment
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Bookwomble
Fresh Dirt from the Grave | Giovanna Rivero
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'Was it warm, this sticky fluid you found down there?'

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

CWs in comment.

Bookwomble I\'ve read the first two of the six stories, and content warnings already included: child sexual abuse, rape, religious abuse, murder and cannibalism. Not as gratuitous as it perhaps sounds, but is graphic enough to be triggering, I think. (edited) 1mo
30 likes1 comment
blurb
Bookwomble
Fresh Dirt from the Grave | Giovanna Rivero
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#Halloween #Samhain
While I'm happy to read horror stories at any time of the year, it's undeniably atmospheric to do so as summer shifts to autumn, with the promise of winter ahead.
I'm starting off the season with the tagged book, and others I've lined up are:
•Tales of Horror & the Supernatural, Arthur Machen
•The Midnight People, Peter Haining, ed.
•Sea Tales of Terror, J. J. Starting, ed.
•I Can't Sleep at Night, Kurt Singer, ed.
🧡🍂🎃🍂🧡

Bookwomble Some or none of which my mood-reader self might actually pick off the shelf! 😏📚 1mo
32 likes1 comment
blurb
Bookwomble
Fresh Dirt from the Grave | Giovanna Rivero
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Durham has two Waterstones shops: I got the book of horror stories by Bolivian author Rivero from the "standard" shop, and the book of Perec essays from the "Plus" shop, which caters for students and has some secondhand, remaindered and academic stock you don't normally see in their mainstream stores.
I'm hoping the horror stories aren't TOO horrific, and that the essays in the Perec don't duplicate those in the Penguin edition I've already read.

The_Book_Ninja Hurricane Womble is tearing through Durham!💨 2mo
Bookwomble @The_Book_Ninja It's blowing a flipping hurricane here today! Driving back home tomorrow, but will stop off in nearby Barnard Castle to check my eyesight is ok for the journey 🤓 2mo
The_Book_Ninja @Bookwomble That‘s the safest way to do it to be fair 2mo
43 likes3 comments