Reviews
"This surreal collection of stories will blow your mind. Both with the content and how well Ghosh has mastered the short story. Each story in this collection bends genre and weaves through expectations. Each one left my jaw on the floor." -- Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful, "These stories are insidiously terrifying, cunning & deeply empathetic -- with Mouth , 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 New American Best Friend and Life of the Party "These stories are so sharp, so strange, so precise - like perfect razors, meant to cut to the heart and open it up to the gasp of pain but also, to astonishing beauty." --Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You "The 11 stories in Mouth are startling, surreal, utterly spectacular. Written in gorgeous and incisive prose and spanning an eerie homecoming in Kolkata to a journey through the flimsy fabric of time and space, Mouth is a work that will leave you forever changed. I have been waiting to read sharp, uncanny stories with this immensity of heart for years. This book is a revelation." --Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, author of Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare "There's a cure for loneliness in each one of Puloma Ghosh's deceptively gentle and unsettling short stories, but always with a ghastly cost. With a penetrative gaze and devastating understanding of our world, Mouth is as sexy as it is uncanny and as gorgeous as it is disgusting. If a novel is a love affair then these short stories are a haunting handshake with a stranger that you'll be thinking about in the middle of the night, somewhat frightened and a little bit aroused. Puloma Ghosh is the new spectral fiction queen of our time." --Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You and Candelaria "Puloma Ghosh is brilliant--a writer whose vision is wholly unique, quite often brutal or surreal, yet so oddly insinuating that within half a sentence you'll find that you've adopted it as your own. Each of the stories in Mouth presents an entire world in miniature, and if those worlds shimmer with irreality, well, so does ours; and if they swerve past the edges of expectation, well, so does ours; and if they bruise you or break your heart, well, ours does, too." --Kevin Brockmeier, author of Ghost Variations and The Brief History of the Dead "Ghosh has somehow taken our insecurities and doubts and rendered them into a gruesome, macabre, and titillating collection of tales. The prose sears every page. Mouth is a marvel of imagination and a most impressive debut. Ghosh is a writer to follow." --Alejandro Varela, author of the 2022 National Book Award fiction finalist, The Town of Babylon "Beautiful and unsettling, creepy and so deeply human: this collection delights with the unexpected, in the gorgeous prose, in the unbound imagination in the stories, and in the formal play . . . All while interrogating lies, truth, and what is real in the vivid description that brings the world Ghosh creates alive." -- Ananda Lima, Michigan Quarterly Review "This surreal collection of stories will blow your mind. Both with the content and how well Ghosh has mastered the short story. Each story in this collection bends genre and weaves through expectations. Each one left my jaw on the floor." -- Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful
Synopsis
"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., "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.
