Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Mouth

Stories

ebook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 6 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 6 weeks
"Sometimes surreal, sometimes horrifying, always startling . . . Mouth introduces readers to Puloma Ghosh's unmatched ability to probe the visceral depths of female pain, desire, and grief." —Alice Martin, Shelf Awareness
"A unique set of stories that show the promise of a bold new voice." —Kirkus Reviews
"Ghosh has offered us a masterclass in surrealist short fiction, bound to haunt its readers long after they’ve put down the book." —Olivia Gatwood, author of Whoever You Are, Honey
"Mouth is a work that will leave you forever changed." —Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, author of Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare
BESTIARY MEETS THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED IN THIS COLLECTION OF 11 EERIE, UNCANNY, AND SURREAL SHORT STORIES

In this debut collection, Puloma Ghosh spins tales of creatures and gore to explore grief, sexuality, and bodily autonomy. Embracing the bizarre and absurd, Mouth stretches reality to reach for truth.
“Desiccation" follows a teen figure skater with necrophiliac fantasies who is convinced the other Indian girl at the rink is a vampire. When a woman returns to Kolkata in “The Fig Tree,” she can’t tell if she is haunted by her dead mother or a shakchunni — or both. “Nip” bottles up the consuming and addictive nature of infatuation, while “Natalya” is a hair-raising autopsy of an ex-lover. In “Persimmons,” a girl comes to terms with her own community sacrifice.
Full of fangs and talons, Mouth lays bare the otherwise awkward and unmentionable with a singular sharpness. Through surreal and captivating prose, Puloma Ghosh delves into otherworldly spaces to reimagine ordinary struggles of isolation, longing, and the aching desires of our flesh.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 29, 2024
      Ghosh debuts with a satisfying speculative collection about grief and desire. In “Desiccation,” an Indian American teen named Meghna falls for the only other Indian girl on her figure skating team, whom she suspects of being a vampire. “The Fig Tree” follows a married woman who returns from the U.S. to her birthplace of Kolkata to scatter her mother’s ashes. There, she glimpses a ghostly woman and wonders if her mother has returned. In “Leaving Things,” wolves overrun a city and devour the women. Afterward, a lonely survivor shelters a wolf baby, unsure what will happen when it grows up. “Lemon Boy” and “Natalya” explore the consequences of revisiting past relationships through the stories of protagonists confronted by the ghosts of their ex-lovers. Some of the shorter entries feel underdeveloped, but for the most part, Ghosh sharply draws the contours of her invented worlds and evokes her characters’ insatiable desires with vibrant imagery (“The whole apartment had turned into a gaping mouth, the wax its saliva pooling on the dining table”). These stories effectively sustain a sense of the uncanny. Agent: Angeline Rodriguez, WME.

    • Booklist

      May 1, 2024
      In Ghosh's debut short-story collection, mouths gnaw, bite, and tear. In "Leaving Things," a human baby tears itself from the stomach of a dying wolf, leaving the vet who found her at a loss; in "Nip," a woman drinks her lover down like honey; in "Anomaly," rips in time appear around the world, and two people decide to go through one on their first date. The blood, guts, and consumption are tangled with sex and an inexplicable, animal kind of desire, all set against images of cold (ice rinks, northern chill, corpses) and the background machinations of greedy, opaque dystopian governments or corporations. Ghosh's stories are all about an at-once intangible and gory hunger, whether it's the sharp, queer romance between two teen ice dancers in "Desiccation" or the way the protagonist of "Supergiant" lets a company hollow her out in order to be a pop star, if only for a time. While some of the tales are only provocative without a convincing narrative core, Ghosh's stories reveal a promising, jagged new literary voice.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      May 15, 2024
      The mundane and the extraordinary mesh into new and fascinating shapes in this debut story collection. Ghosh mixes ordinary events with fantastical and ominous realities. In "Desiccation," a young figure skater has a flirtation with a vampire on the rink while her mother struggles with her job in a government that disappears young men who reach a certain age. A woman decides to get back on dating apps now that the time war has ended and winds up going through a tear in space and time on a first date in "Anomaly." Life in Ghosh's stories runs the gamut from odd but close to normal, as in "Natalya," which takes the form of an autopsy report performed by the dead woman's ex-partner, to the fantastical, as in "Persimmons," in which a young girl comes to terms with her fate as the future sacrifice of her small community of space colonists. Each story is tinged with queer themes, most of the protagonists either lesbian or bisexual, and many feature the protagonists' Indian heritage, as in "The Fig Tree," in which a woman travels to India with her father to spread her mother's ashes. Ghosh's tales push at the limits of comfort, as what seems understandable suddenly morphs into the bizarre. There's a sensuality to them all that usually works though sometimes feels added simply for the sake of it. As they run the gamut from slightly strange to almost metaphysical, not all the stories will necessarily connect with readers, but when one hits, it will linger. Ghosh shows incredible range, imagination, and depth of feeling with this first collection. A unique set of stories that show the promise of a bold new voice.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Loading