Dead Girls and Other Stories

Ms. Geminder's collection of stories was not what I was expecting. Usually when reading a collection, I feel emotionally invested in a few stories and the rest are "meh," but Dead Girls had an emotional punch in every story. She plays with form to great effect, the characters are vivid, and there's a haunting presence running throughout the collection. Highly, highly recommend.

The language is exquisite and can seem almost dreamlike, but it has an undercurrent of pure steel. It explores gender and geopolitics and violence and love with precise, gorgeous prose and never flinches from the uncomfortable in-between spaces. Instead, it relishes them. Research is woven in without ever distracting from the narrative, and--if you're anything like me--you'll google a few things when you can put the book down to find out even more. These stories are so filled with curiosity about the world that it makes the reader curious. I've read this collection twice already, and I'll probably read it again before the year's end, and every reading helps me notice something new. I can't recommend Dead Girls enough.

I love the way she writes. The writing made her personal stories more universal in appeal. Her use of language makes the mundane seem dramatic , exciting and mysterious. Her style made me feel a personal connection, as if I could relate to each and every one. Her use of words is incredible. The descriptions, metaphors took my breath away.

Excellent stories and writing.

This book fully captures why I love short story collections.Geminder is first of all, a brilliantly lyrical and magnetic writer. I couldn't help but be drawn in to her writing every time my eyes hit the page.With stories weaving together themes about gender, identity, politics, trauma, and more, the focus of the book is on perception and the self: how the world sees us versus how we see ourselves and what comes of those perceptions. Sometimes reality wavers or is more gauzy as in the strange ghostliness of "1-800-FAT-GIRL", and sometimes the harshness of it comes right in your face, like in the more journalistic stories set in other countries.Each story offers something new that I really had to think about and sit with. This isn't the type of collection you can just breeze through, and you won't want to either. There are so many beautiful sentences to contemplate and savor—a true joy to read.Favorite stories: "Houses," "1-800-FAT-GIRL," "Coming to," "Edie," and "Dead Girls." And yes, that's half of them! They are so good. It's hard to choose.My thanks to Dzanc Books for sending me a copy of this one.

There were a lot of really good stories here, but a few that I really had to force myself to finish. I feel like this always happens when I read collections though, if there are one or two I don’t care for it kind of drags my overall rating down.

I got this book because of the good reviews. I didn't like any of the stories. I wondered if it might belong in the Teen Fiction category.