Some of these stories gave me the creeps in all the best ways!!! I liked the time travel one and the space weasel one the best. ( )

Such a weird collections of queer, oddball stories. I really enjoyed all of them, though I found the last and longest to be a little dry. Maybe if the space weasels were still alive and involved it would have helped. I liked the story in voice recordings, that felt very gothic horror in short form. I wish the ocean under the couch story was longer! In all, a great diverse and twisted collection. ( )

So, a friend reminded me that Dzanc Books existed on a day when I was feeling pandemic stir-crazy, so of course I immediately headed over to their website to pick out a few books. This one I chose despite my resistance to short stories because I had been following Nino Cipri on twitter, the description sounded amazing, and when I checked the Goodreads reviews I saw that a few of my bookstagram friends had already read it and loved it.

I ENDED UP A LITTLE BIT FERAL ABOUT THIS BOOK AND I HAVE BEEN SCREAMING AT EVERYONE I KNOW TO BUY/READ CIPRI'S BOOKS EVER SINCE. While of course some stories worked better for me that others, there was no filler. I fell in love/smit/maternal-caregiving-mode with so many characters, was pleasantly surprised where some of these stories went, and would like to camp out on the author's lawn to demand more of the world of "Before We Disperse Like Star Stuff."

This was such a random purchase but I am SO GLAD I made it! ( )

I think I loved everything about this collection of short stories. Definitely more towards the horror end of the fantastical. Because I loved all the stories, I'm going to make notes about them separately. Overall this is a collection of tightly written stories full of complex and well realised characters. Cipri does an outstanding job of presenting a range of individuals with complex minority identities.

A Silly Love Story autistic coded character deals with poltergeist. Actually a l0ve story more than anything else -- the love interest's gender is unknown, and the protagonist doesn't care (story/love interest uses both he/him and she/her pronouns)
Which Super Little Dead Girl TM Are You - written in the style of a multiple choice personality quiz which manages to hide four very macabre stories. Really good subtle horror.
Dead Air - 'epistolary' fic for the modern age, being transcripts of found audio. This is another finely crafted horror story with an ambiguous ending.
She Hides Sometimes - Very visceral story about memory loss, forgetting, and being forgotten. Allegorical.
Let Down, Set Free - another allegorical story, but more hopeful; life after divorce.
The Shape of My Name - Possibly my favourite of the collection, this is a love letter to an absent parent - historically emotionally, currently physically absent - as well as a story of an adult child rejecting their parents assumptions about them. The beautifully non-linear narrative fits well with the time-travel aspect of the story. My favourite little detail is the way that the different time periods are characterised by scent.
Not an Ocean, but the Sea - beautifully surreal. The perspective of Nadia on cleaning the house of the arseholes threw me back two decades to working cleaning jobs. But I never found anything as exciting as Nadia did.
Presque Vu - evocative and surreal end of the world, where everyone is haunted by something different. Not a happy ending, but at least a hopeful one.
Before we disperse like star stuff - extinct language using non-human mega-fauna; too much and too real academic discourse; and the mending of fractured friendships. ( )

"Who knew why straight people did anything, really."

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for racism, homophobia, and transphobia.)

You and I, we’re twenty feet and more than a hundred years apart.
("the shape of my name")

It is easy for him to imagine the worst things. Trying to see exactly what’s in front of him is harder. A plastic container full of living fruit. The streetlight shining through the window. The dangling thread of wool on his suit, the shiny black buttons. His cheap apartment, his silent and spectral roommate, the letter confirming his academic suspension, his infatuation with someone who switches out their gender like it’s an attractive but itchy sweater, his mother’s disappointment, his dwindling savings.
And the one thing he can’t see, can’t imagine: his future. That’s the monster, really, that’s lurking at the corner of this painting.
("a silly love story")

Maybe it's my pitiful lack of imagination, or perhaps it's just because I've written so damn many of these, but I always have the most trouble titling a review. It's not uncommon for me to just pluck a choice quote from the book I'm reviewing. Here, though? The title pretty much chose itself.

Homesick: Stories is such a gloriously and unapologetically queer collection of short fiction. And it doesn't feel gimmicky or purposefully overdone, either: the LBGTQ elements are organic, authentic, and fit seamlessly with the content of the stories. Like, they just are. And why not? The author is "queer and nonbinary/transgender" (and "One time, an angry person called Nino a verbal terrorist, which was pretty cool.").

The writing here is exquisite and magical; every word and turn of phrase feels like it was conjured from the 'verse using spells and potions. The stories could mostly be described as speculative fiction, with a liberal seasoning of fantasy and scifi throughout. Many of the tales have a surreal, dreamlike quality to them that will throw you for a loop - or twenty.

They didn't all do it for me - them's the breaks with anthologies - but even the "worst" of the bunch was entertaining and held my full attention. Really my main complaint, in the event that there is one, is that some of the stories either end abruptly or without a satisfactory conclusion. That said, "the shape of my name" and "before we disperse like star stuff" alone make Homesick a must read.

"a silly love story" - 4/5

There is a poltergeist living in Jeremy's closet, unspooling the stitching on his ancient suit and stinking everything up with the smell of apricots and dust. There is also a bigender person named Merion haunting his heart, threatening to either break or cultivate it. This is a surprisingly sweet and tender story, and the monster is absolutely not what you expect it to be. (Hint: it's a thousand times scarier than a mildly annoying ghost.)

"Which Super Little Dead Girl™ Are You? Take Our Quiz and Find Out!" - 3/5

I got Jane Doe, with Madelyn coming in a close second.

"dead air" - 4/5

Nita's sociologically influenced art project/"ethnography of the people I fuck" goes off the rails when she falls in love with one of her subjects, a girl named Maddie. Maddie is haunted by her small town past, and before long those ghosts will devour Nita too. "dead air" is creepy and atmospheric, and has a kind of Blair Witch vibe, told as it is via a series of interview transcripts. I just wish I knew wtf was going on (!).

"she hides" - 3/5

After Anjana's aging parents move into a nursing home, she's tasked with cleaning out their house. In an otherworldly mirroring of her mom's deteriorating mental state, the house begins to shrink before Anjana's eyes. So she takes refuge in the hiding place of her childhood: her parents' oversized bedroom bureau. "she hides" is beautifully told, yet it didn't quite do it for me.

"let down, set free" - 3/5

In a letter addressed to her ex-husband, the narrator recounts how she left her old life behind: saddled atop a floating alien tree. An invasive species the government has instructed its citizens to burn, natch.

"the shape of my name" - 5/5 amazing

Originally published as a short story on Tor.com in 2015, "the shape of my name" is one of my favorites of the bunch. Heron was born in the 1950s and assigned female at birth. His mom knew that he'd one day make the transition to male and choose his own name. Not because she's particularly insightful or progressive when it comes to gender roles and identity, but rather because her family has a time machine and she's seen the future. Perhaps this is why she chose to live and die in self-exile in the future, abandoning Heron and his father in the present.

I’m sure you were lonely, waiting for me to grow up so you could travel again. You were exiled when you married Dad in 1947, in that feverish period just after the war. It must have been so romantic at first. I’ve seen the letters he wrote during the years he courted you. You’d grown up seeing his name written next to yours, with the date that you’d marry him. When did you start feeling trapped, I wonder? You were caught in a weird net of fate and love and the future and the past. You loved Dad, but your love kept you hostage. You loved me, but you knew that someday I’d transform myself into someone you didn’t recognize.

"the shape of my name" is a magical, innovative, and aching scifi story that weaves time travel with trans issues in a way that's simply breathtaking. It's really just a thing of beauty and wonder, particularly in the words Cipri chooses to describe each year in the narrator's experience. Every jump, every era, has its own distinct feeling and flavor. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it.

"not an ocean, but the sea" - 3/5

A middle-aged cleaning woman named Nadia finds an ocean hidden under her clients' couch. At just a few pages, this is the shortest of the short stories. No less magical, but I want more!

"presque vu" - 4/5

Everyone in this unnamed town is haunted by something. Clay coughs up keys, usually while fast asleep at night. His neighbor Mari receives vintage postcards. Her boyfriend Finn wakes up with unspooled cassette tapes tangled in his hair. Clay's ex-lover Joe gets phone calls from a ghost. And the entire community is plagued by wraiths, ethereal creatures who fly overhead and emit radioactive-esque glowing lights. Supposedly "unwinding" a wraith will rid its abuser of their haunting. Cue: some really vile and uncomfortable ugliness.

A lovely and brutal story, "presque vu" ended just a little too abruptly for my tastes.

"before we disperse like star stuff" - 5/5

Two years ago, the discovery of an intelligent nonhuman species - Megalictis ossicarminis, who lived three and a half million years ago, looked like a cross between river otters and wolverines, and were capable of using tools and written language - brought three friends together. There's Damian Flores, an activist who left academia to pen a popular science book about his discovery; Min-ji Hong, PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of Chicago and Damian's close friend since their high school days at Camp Transcendent; and Ray Walker, a biology professor at Emporia State University in Kansas and Damian's ex-lover.

Reunited for a documentary the Smithsonian network is shooting, the estranged friends try to work through the aftermath of their fame: Damian's selling out (and Damian and Ray's subsequent breakup), Min's theft of the oracle bones, and the potential reinterment of the ossicarminis's remains.

While "a long-extinct species of intelligent weasels" is both fascinating and ultimately what sold me on this collection, "before we disperse like star stuff" is as much about relationships as anything: romantic, platonic, societal. It's about what we owe each other, including our ancestors and neighbors.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2019/11/19/homesick-stories-by-nino-cipri/ ( )