MixedThe Guardian (UK)All of them are certainly competent exercises in horror, but the most thrilling for me were those that took a breakneck spin into other generic territories ... Feels like something fresh ... Overall, however, A Sunny Place for Shady People feels uneven in its development. There are some stories here that are conceptually strong, but feel sketchy or banal in their realisation.
Ferdia Lennon
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Vvery much a story about the power of stories – and the spiritual and emotional succour they give – though, fortunately, too much of a clever one to fall entirely into the mode of blithe self-congratulation ... The action takes place over just a few weeks, and the novel clips along in a tidy prose judiciously filigreed with some lovely image-making and the odd Homeric epithet ... There’s still a lot to like in the book, even when the sitcom sensibility starts to buckle under the weight of its premise. I was left wanting more, in part because I suspect Lennon can deliver it, but I have no doubt this breezy novel will win him many fans.
Jess Kidd
MixedThe Guardian (UK)Gil and Mayken’s stories intersect, with the novel structured in alternating chapters. Although this bifurcated architecture allows for elegant moments of mirroring across the two timelines, I also found it frustrating ... This is a shame, as the book is clearly meticulously researched, and her account of the Batavia’s foundering is among the most compelling sections ... For a novel inspired by a historical atrocity, The Night Ship is curiously insipid. The search for the Bullebak seems like unnecessary magic-realist interpolation into already fascinating fact. It never really goes anywhere ... Kidd is doubtless a talented writer and a skilled world-builder, but there was much in this novel I found wanting.
Rachel Yoder
PositiveThe Guardian (UK)There has been something of a resurgence in stories of feminine monstrousness, but Yoder’s take feels very fresh, even mischievous in its handling of the metamorphic trope. She ironises the ponderous trappings of the gothic with a chatty, insubstantial tone, employing lots of exclamation marks and other deceptively corny affectations. It all helps to build a disconcerting intimacy with her pseudo-canine protagonist. We follow Nightbitch as she stalks by shimmering hosta leaves, through the gardens of sprawling McMansions and under the strip lights of mega malls, all brightly evoked in Yoder’s exuberant, velvety prose ... The mounting incongruity between Nightbitch’s profane interiority and this sanitised, suburban mise en scène yields some of the novel’s funniest scenes ... Not all of the humour worked for me. Some of the jokes – and I am fully aware I am saying this in the context of a review of a book in which a woman turns into a dog – strained credulity...Likewise, Nightbitch’s husband’s comic obliviousness to her condition edges, at times, into the cartoonish ... Yoder’s humour may sometimes miss the mark, but her commentary on the assorted neuroses of modern womanhood is graceful and coolly incisive ... Where Yoder’s novel felt most original to me was in this harnessing of the familiar tropes of individual transfiguration to a broader social critique. The novel’s premise reads like the literal embodiment of an expensive residential workshop Gwyneth Paltrow might endorse: centre the spirit through dog-play. Find your inner wolf mother. The sensational nature of the Nightbitch’s metamorphosis reveals, by contrast, the paucity of what capitalism offers moneyed western women, torn between the conflicting demands of work and family: herbal remedies in bijou packaging, a new pair of leather boots ... Despite these satirical undertones, there is a pleasing generosity about this debut. Nightbitch’s premise may not be radically original, and neither is its denouement – but Yoder’s peculiar wit infuses new life into the cold, furry flesh of the monstrous femme.
