What Was Never There - Elizabeth Maria Naranjo - ★★★.¼

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AUTHOR: Elizabeth Maria Naranjo
GENRE: Short Story Collection
PUBLICATION DATE: December 21, 2023
RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: An indie short story collection with a mix of emotional and bittersweet tales. The writing is exceptional, but the endings could have worked better for me as many fail to provide resolution. A great option for those who are more about the journey than about the destination. 


This collection of eighteen stories is simultaneously diverse and similar, diverse in terms of plotlines, and similar in terms of writing and atmosphere. While there's no author's note to inform us of the theme or intent behind these tales, the blurb specifies that the stories are all connected to memory and how it haunts us.

While reading the book, the theme didn't come out that strongly to me. To be clear, I had read fourteen stories before I went to the blurb to see if it held any clue about the theme, because there was nothing I found connecting the tales in a thread. This is both positive and negative: positive because each story creates its own identity, and negative because each story in the collection feels too independent to be a part of the unified whole. 

I am still not sure how memory is the key theme of the stories. Yes, many of them were about handing the past, whether in terms of forgiveness and healing or in terms of letting the trauma affect you. But not every story fit into the topic of “haunting memories”. Many of the stories are also connected to children, whether being from child narrators or from parents struggling with their children or even couples struggling to have children. 

The writing is lush and vivid. The descriptions as well as the emotions come out beautifully in almost every story. In fact, the style feels almost poetic. Not once did I feel like I couldn’t visualise the setting and the characters. The atmosphere in every story is suitably dark and haunting, appropriate to the official theme.

The length of the tales is quite varied, with a couple of the tales being just 3-4 pages long. The shorter ones didn't work for me at all as they felt too abstract. (I'm not a fan of abstract writing, so this is a ME problem.)

Where the book could have done a little better for me is with the endings of the tales. I'm okay if stories don't have happy endings or even if the endings are left open. But there must be something at the finale to make me go 'Wow!' in happiness or in disbelief. In this book, many of the stories made me go 'That's it?' at the end, which is really unfortunate and frustrating because the rest of each tale was impeccable. As I progressed through the book, I was reminded of Anjali Sachdeva’s ‘All the Names They Used for God’, another short fiction collection where I felt exactly the same about the stories and their endings.

That said, I was never bored by any of these stories, nor did I feel like reading them became a chore with every subsequent tale. The narrative and the writing were more than sufficient to hold my attention throughout. 

As always, I rated the stories individually. Of the eighteen stories, seven stories reached or crossed the four-star mark, with a further seven tales securing between 3-3.5 stars. Had the endings for these been stronger, they would have fared even better.

These were my top favourites:
💠 A Practical Man - An interesting story with an ending I didn't see coming. I loved the twist but wish it were somewhat more fleshed out. It felt a bit rushed at the end. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

💠 From Autumn to June - An epistolary story, with a creative but somewhat sad secret. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

💠 A Dragon Story - A couple is divided in their opinion about wanting parenthood. Common issue, uncommon couple. No dragon characters, sadly. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

💠 What Was Never There - A deserving titular story depicting how a mother and a daughter have to scramble for safety in the woods after their car breaks down. Loved the dual perspective of both characters, a tough approach to carry out successfully in short fiction. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

💠 Blind Spot - A bittersweet story about a man who realises that focussing on the blind spot while driving may not always be the best idea. One of the few stories with an ending that worked for me. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

💠 The Lost Girls - Yet another poignant story, this one about a sibling relationship going wrong. Hauntingly beautiful. I just wish some of the character motivations had been clearer. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

💠 Light as a Feather - A slumber party turns into a night of many discoveries for a group of fifth graders. Began fun but ended in an introspective way. Would have loved it even more had the structure been linear. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐


All in all, a well-worded indie collection exploring the depths of human emotions and the vagaries of human situations, but not always with fulfilling endings. I know that such finales work for many readers, so I hope the book reaches their hands and that they can relish the beauty of the plots and the humanness of the characters without hindrance.

Recommended to short story fans and literary fiction lovers who are more into the journey than the destination, as the journey is soul-satisfying.

3.25 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each tale.

My thanks to WOW! Women On Writing and author Elizabeth Maria Naranjo for a complimentary copy of 'What Was Never There', and for allowing me to be a part of this Reader Review Event. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. 

The digital version of this book is currently available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

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Blurb:

A mother and daughter lost in the woods must overcome their worst fears to find their way back. A father going through a divorce witnesses a seemingly impossible motorcycle accident, which forces him to question the truth of his own perceptions. A little boy with a terrible secret routinely steals away at night to meet a girl beneath a willow tree—only to discover she has a secret of her own.

What Was Never There is a collection of short stories with the common theme of memory, or rather, the way memory haunts us.

Includes Pushcart Prize nominated stories “We Never Get to Talk Anymore” and “The Dinosaur Graveyard" and the award-winning "Windows," selected for Best Microfiction 2023.


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Author Elizabeth Maria Naranjo:

Elizabeth Maria Naranjo is the author of The Fourth Wall and The House on Linden Way. She lives in Tempe, Arizona, with her husband and two children.

Elizabeth's short stories and creative nonfiction have been published in Brevity Magazine, Superstition Review, Fractured Lit, Hunger Mountain, The Portland Review, Hospital Drive, Literary Mama, Motherwell, Reservoir Road, and a few other places. Her work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, Best American Essay, and Best of the Net.

Connect with her on:

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This has been a stop on the #WhatWasNeverThere blog tour conducted by WOW! Women On Writing. (@womenonwriting on X/Twitter.) Thanks for stopping by!


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