Date: 2018-09-22 06:29 pm (UTC)
juushika: A black and white photo of an ink pen (Writing)
From: [personal profile] juushika
So belated as to be useless but: I feel like none of her work is speculative primarily; the speculative concept is always in service of the feminist themes, and isn't the focus of clever trope inversions, etc.; even when they're weirder concepts than the ribbon with its urban legend/ghost story roots, the way it works is fairly straightforward within the bounds of that Weird and dream-like logic that fuels the SVU story.

Which is probably a more exhaustive answer than you need! But I find it interesting b/c I generally avoid literary fiction/literary speculative fiction; I don't like the borrowing of genre markers or interesting concepts without the work to make them stand alone or contribute to the genre/trope. Mochado didn't ping that for me. That's due to a number of factors--that slipstream/Weird/fairytale-ghost story-urban legend influences/genre markers/literary fiction combo is diverse enough that it doesn't just feel Kazuo Ishiguro-esque, weak speculative in a literary dress; the grace also with which speculative interacts with metaphor and with social commentary really works for me. But "it doesn't do this poorly" isn't the same thing as "it does this strongly"—and it doesn't just apply to literary speculative fiction: the relationship between premise-as-hook and exception/execution is universal, and universally complex.

So uhhhhh TL;DR: I'd still guess that nah, you're fine skipping the collection; but motivates us to read vs the payoff we expect from a narrative is so complicated! and interesting (to me)!
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