In Other Lifetimes All I've Lost Comes Back to Me - Courtney Sender - ★★★.¼

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AUTHOR: Courtney Sender
GENRE: Single-Author Anthology.
RATING: 3.2 stars.

In a Nutshell: Definitely good writing in this anthology, but also, definitely not my kind of writing. Will work better for the right reader.


There's no author's note in thi3s anthology to introduce us to the connecting themes in the fourteen stories or the thought behind the collection. (I love authors’ notes in anthologies; they make a vast difference to our experience of the stories.) But the blurb reveals love, longing, and loneliness to be the focus of the tales. Each story deals with at least one of these three components, so the claim is valid.

That said, the stories don't follow the traditional writing progression every time but are quite random in their approach. Some are slice of life, some are akin to stream of consciousness monologues, and some are abstract musings on an incident. While some stories offer closure and a neat finish, some end too abruptly. A couple of stories go in a flow but the rest meander on their way to the end.

The wordplay in each story makes it amply clear that the author is talented. The little world created either through ponderings or unfolding scenes is in vivid detail, and the characters are always atypical. But the somewhat metaphysical tone underlying most of the stories didn't click for me.

A few of the stories are partially linked to each other. While there is no overt mention of this, the similar title of the linked stories provides a clue.

As always, I rated the stories individually, and the result is somewhat a mixed bag. The stories that catered to my taste in terms of plot development and storytelling scored high, while the ones that were more abstract and rambling didn’t fare that well. These were my top favourites:
Only Things We Say - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫
The Docent - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫
Both the above had three things in common – a proper build-up, an impressive first person narrator, and a poignant ending.

All in all, the stories do have merit and they will work better for a reader with more philosophical literary tastes. Not for me though. This was a clever anthology, but I wasn't clever enough for it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3.2 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each story.

My thanks to author Courtney Sender and BookSirens for the DRC of “In Other Lifetimes, All I've Lost Comes Back to Me: Stories”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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