In This Ravishing World by Nina Schuyler
Short Stories, 294 pages
Published July 2, 2024 by Regal House Publishing
In this Ravishing World is a sweeping, impassioned short story collection, ringing out with joy, despair, and hope for the natural world.
Nine connected stories unfold, bringing together an unforgettable cast of dreamers, escapists, activists, and artists, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the climate crisis. An older woman who has spent her entire life fighting for the planet sinks into despair. A young boy is determined to bring the natural world to his bleak urban reality. A scientist working to solve the plastic problem grapples with whether to have a child. A ballet dancer endeavors to inhabit the consciousness of a rat.
In this Ravishing World is a full-throated chorus—with Nature joining in—marveling at the exquisite beauty of our world, and pleading, raging, and ultimately urging all of its inhabitants toward activism and resistance.
My thoughts about In This Ravishing World ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first line.)
First lines—"The human ear can hear a sound wave as low as 20 hertz, the lowest pedal on a pipe organ, or pick up a pitch as high as 20,000 hertz, a soprano singer's C7. This might be a problem. I don't speak in your range."
This is a short story collection that doesn't feel like a short story collection. What I mean by that is that all of these stories are so wonderfully connected that the storylines and characters flowed seamlessly together. I felt like I was reading an intriguing novel.
This was a book that made me stop and think about what we are doing to our planet and maybe how we can change for the better. I loved it when I figured out who/what the narrator was. And I'm not telling!
The author does an amazing job with her writing and I felt totally comfortable reading her words. The group of characters were an interesting mix who were each dealing with their own issues. All in all, this was a very enjoyable book and I'm interested in reading more by this author.
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About the author
Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections and The Prism Prize for Climate Literature, will be published by Regal House Publishing in 2024. Her novel, Afterword, was named a Notable 100 Book in the 2023 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition. Her novel, The Translator, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her book, How to Write Stunning Sentences, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller, and her new craft book, Stunning Sentences: The Creative Writing Journal with 80 New Prompts from Beloved Authors to Improve Your Style, was published by Fiction Advocate in November 2022.
She teaches creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies, The Writing Salon, and for the independent bookstore, Book Passage. She writes a column about prose style for Fiction Advocate and reviews books for The Millions. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics with Honors, UC Law San Francisco, where she earned a J.D., and San Francisco State University, where she earned an MFA. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two sons, where she hikes, bodysurfs, and writes in a small room, looking out at a tall palm tree. ~ Author's website
Connect with Nina
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