The Unfinished World

Starred review from November 30, 2015
The images tumbling from Sparks’s mind in her extraordinary second story collection (following May We Shed These Human Bodies) are fantastical and sublime, whether she is unveiling the secret life of a janitor working in a space station, exposing the heart of darkness in a twin who is set on revenge, or—as in the title novella—pairing two lovers in the 1920s who have widely diverging backgrounds. In present-day, historical, and fantasy settings, the author is assured; her spare but colorful prose takes the reader on journeys of longing and mystery, often into uncharted territory, all the while capturing setting and character in a few words—“Teesa is one of those people who substitute scarves for personality.” As Sparks explores the glory of a daughter killing a werewolf in “Take Your Daughter to the Slaughter,” the tenderness of the man who builds “death houses” in “For These Humans Who Cannot Fly,” or the obsession of a time traveler in “Thirteen Ways of Destroying a Painting,” the breadth of her imagination never ceases to amaze.

November 15, 2015
A collection of elliptical stories in which death throws a long shadow over an eclectic group of characters. There's a man who builds houses for the dead in case they come back to life, a taxidermist who learned her art from her late father, and two fossil hunters in a love triangle. The 19 stories in Sparks' second collection (May We Shed These Human Bodies, 2012) are shot through with fabulist elements and are rarely more than a few pages long, making them read like fairy tales or prose poems. And as with poetry, the strength of the collection is Sparks' lush, lyrical writing, saturating the dark, death-filled stories with beauty. Many of the stories, in fact, feature characters trying to find solace--either through love or through art--in the face of loss. In "The Fires of Western Heaven," about the aftermath of war, the anonymous first-person plural narrator admits, "We write, we sing, we paint, and still the blackness follows, still the dead are there in every note, every brushstroke." In the collection's title piece (which, at novella length, is the book's longest, by far), Set, a young man who has always felt like half a ghost after a childhood bear attack, crosses paths with Inge, whose family and home have been decimated by tragedy. Sparks interweaves Inge's and Set's histories together with descriptions of items from Set's dead brother's "Cabinet of Curiosities," a collection of mysterious items--extinct birds' eggs, burned baby teeth--that haunts Set. Sparks' stories, too, function much like the curiosities in the cabinet: finely wrought, strange, and sometimes inscrutable. When Inge wonders, "Was the world crowded with ghosts?" the collection answers for her: yes. Luckily for readers, we have Sparks to guide us through the underworld. Stylish and deeply imagined.

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December 1, 2015
The stories in Sparks' (May We Shed These Human Bodies, 2014) imaginative new collection span unusual landscapes, as characters grapple with perceptions of truth, morality, and resolution. The Cemetery for Lost Faces follows siblings Louise and Clarence after the death of their parents, as Louise picks up taxidermy to support them, and they confront childhood memories and their current situation. Other tales find characters seeking atonement for their transgressions or those of others. In The Janitor in Space, a woman is haunted by her past. In The Men and Women Like Him, time travelers are tasked with cleaning up the mess of space pirates. Another story follows a group of young women hunting on the opening day of werewolf season. The titular novella sets the merging paths of Set and Inge. Set lives with his eccentric family in New York, and when his beloved older brother dies, the family spirals. On another continent, Inge is forced to carve a path of her own after her family is pulled apart. Sparks' narratives are boldly surreal yet anchored by everyday worries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)