FIFTY BEASTS TO BREAK YOUR HEART

Folklorist Nethercott’s collection of original spooky stories is hauntingly familiar.

Workers at a sinister tourist trap become trapped in their own patterns in “Sundown at the Eternal Staircase.” In “A Diviner’s Abecedarian,” a tight-knit group of girls has a sinister way of welcoming new friends. A boy tries to protect his older sister from near-constant drowning in “Drowning Lessons.” In the title story, a group of florists include details of their doomed romances alongside descriptions of mythical creatures. Women lose themselves, sometimes by becoming a house (“Homebody”) and sometimes by becoming a ghost of themselves (“A Lily Is a Lily”), all for men who would happily reduce them to nothing. Nethercott’s writing takes on the tone of timeless folklore, from fairy tales to urban legends to ghost stories. But what makes these stories read as true and familiar isn’t a trick of syntax. Instead, it’s Nethercott’s insightful exploration of the universal themes that classic stories are meant to capture. Teenage (and adult) heartbreak, class anxiety, societal cruelty against those who are different, and the everyday losses of women trying desperately to conform to patriarchal standards are all explored here with great sensitivity and almost always a surprising twist. Nethercott winkingly thanks her exes in the acknowledgments, saying, “If you think it’s about you, it probably is,” but luckily for readers, she has a great talent for taking personal pains and making them universal.

A memorable story collection that makes the supernatural personal.