Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Thank you Astra House for the copy! How crazy it is to read something so haunting and singular only to discover that the piece is a writer's debut. Puloma Ghosh's "Mouth" is more like a firstborn child than it is a 'first pancake' � a pridefully treasured darling, the most beautiful thing to come out of her yet. Every part of it kicks and lingers and I'll be happy to have it all ring in my head like a church bell.

Ghosh writes in the likes of Ottessa Moshfegh in a way that's less grotesque but still eerie and monstrous nonetheless. Most if not all of her stories in "Mouth" orbit a monster / ghost of some kind, and they all get increasingly more tantalizing the further you go. My favorites were:
- Anomaly, where a woman goes on a date with a stranger to experience an otherworldly black hole-esque space
- Persimmon, which was the perfect end to this collection and sooo very Shirley Jackson � fruit metaphors are truly the works of god... all of this illustrating around consuming and being swallowed up
- K, a slight revisit of Red Riding Hood, maybe? But with all the ghastliness that the childhood version buried
- Supergiant, in which a pop star's last concert is virtually the end of her road in all aspects. Ghosh wrote this insanely compelling sentence in it: "This body doesn't feel like mine when it's unchoreographed."
- In the Winter, which was brief yet incredibly striking. Ghosh wrote such stunning lines in this story like: "How did I escape the room, you ask, and I'll tell you that to outgrow a room is not to leave it, only swallow hard and walk around with it rattling inside you until eventually you fill up with enough things that it doesn't make a sound."

Anyway, that's all to say Puloma Ghosh is absurdly talented and endlessly inventive. I'm very excited for what she releases next but until then, 5 stars for a brilliant debut