Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: A House is a Body

Author: Shruti Swamy

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 3/5

Recommended For...: women’s fiction, short stories

Publication Date: August 11, 2020

Genre: Short Story Compilation

Recommended Age: 17+ (romance, TW sexual abuse mentions/illusions, language)

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Pages: 208

Synopsis: In two-time O. Henry-prize winner Swamy's debut collection of stories, dreams collide with reality, modernity collides with antiquity, myth with true identity, and women grapple with desire, with ego, with motherhood and mortality. In "Earthly Pleasures," Radika, a young painter living alone in San Francisco, begins a secret romance with one of India's biggest celebrities. In "A Simple Composition," a husband's moment of crisis leads to his wife's discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy and the sense of a new beginning. In the title story, an exhausted mother watches, distracted and paralyzed, as a California wildfire approaches her home. With a knife blade's edge and precision, the stories of A House Is a Body travel from India to America and back again to reveal the small moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.

Review: I thought this book was pretty good. It’s comprised of short stories and they’re fairly cohesive. The books are all interesting and have great world building overall. The books are also well paced for the most part.

However, because they’re short stories, some of them don’t have that good of character development, but overall they’re all fairly well done.

Verdict: It’s pretty good! Definitely recommend if you like short stories.