You want to know my favorites from this collection, right? Of course you do! This is hard, but I’d have to choose “Inchworm” and “Second Death of the Father.” It’s these two stories that, for me, were the richest in strange imagery and psychological exploration. At times, such as in “The Second Death of the Father” (which, unsurprisingly, won the 2017 Ignotus Prize), Jurado delves deep into a character’s psyche, patiently adding up a character’s feelings and memories until the sum of these parts produces an almost tangible picture of horror. What binds them together is Jurado’s singular style, which involves seemingly-effortless build-ups, sentence by sentence, of the clash between the “real” and the fantastic. Each story takes up a different aspect of the surreal or fantastic: here we find vampires, aliens, ghosts, and organic intelligences. Basically, when Cristina Jurado is telling you a story, you should really listen.Īlphaland may not be a large collection (six stories, together adding up to just over 120 pages), but it is intense, like a long, sustained nightmare that lasts the whole time you’re asleep. Dead fathers come back to haunt their tortured daughters prostitutes turn out to be horrifying, human-devouring alien intelligences spaceships function as nurturing mothers. The minute you dive into Alphaland, you’re transported to a surreal world swirling with mystery, terror, and the inexplicable.
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