Unfortunately, this one just didn't work for me. I'm still trying to put my finger on the reason. Short stories are often hit or miss, depending on the author's ability to encapsulate emotion in such a small package.

This is an artful collection of stories that I can imagine returning to again and again.

What I loved most was the variety, demonstrating that Shruti Swami may be a debut author but her range is immense. With stories told in first and third person, set in the US and in India, portraying dark and light, I reacted differently to every one. "The Siege," for example, had an enchanting fairytale quality to it. And I found the narrator in "My Brother at the Station" supremely unlikeable!

I highly recommend this book.

My thanks to Algonquin Books for the advance copy.

It’s been a summer of short story collections for me and A House Is a Body is the best one yet.

I was left feeling like how I always do after reading truly great short fiction: a little despondent, a little hopeful, and satisfyingly contemplative. It’s deep, flowery, and unapologetically literary, which is my favorite genre. Best read slowly, at night, with tea in hand.

Début collection of stories by Shruti Swamy..
Twelve stories that shows loss, love and friendship. I enjoyed some stories. Some stories I couldn’t read to intense.
I want to thank NetGalley, Algonquin Books and Shruti Swamy for this invitation to this Blog Tour with this free arc in exchange of an honest review.

This is a collection of short stories centred around people's connection with their bodies and the world around them. I found the writing style very interesting yet I feel that it would've flowed slightly better as a physical book rather than an ebook as the point of views, flashbacks and perspectives may have been better demarcated as I found myself getting slightly confused in different slots and spaces. I feel however, that this author's tone is incredibly unique and I wouldn't be closed off to learning more about this author and their work. This is interesting as I've also never read books with Hindu main characters and this book is beautifully diverse in that sense. I enjoyed seeing the personification of Krishna and the dynamic of a Hindu god living in a secular western society. I loved the whole concept but again, the ebook format didn't seem to flow as well as I wished it would have.

If you're going to read this, I do recommend checking out a physical copy of it.

Short stories are my jam and this book is where they are at. I'm serious. This book was chock full of fantastic short stories that just tugged at your heartstrings and made you think about family, motherhood, identity, life, and desire. It was excellent.

Swamy has compiled a delicious book of short stories that will have you staying up late into the night or reading one short a day to savor them all slowly. I chose the latter and would dip in and out of this book every day to get my fix. Normally, I gobble books up, but this time round, I wanted to take my time. I wanted to sit with each story and just take my time. And let me just say, reading this book slowly was the way to go. I just loved getting to know these characters and getting lost in each of their stories. It felt like such a treat to have a great short story to dive into each day. I really enjoyed Swamy's writing and storytelling - top notch all the way through.

What a shame, I usually gravitate towards short story collections. "A House Is A Body" just didn't connect with me. I can't think of one story that left me with a lasting impression. I ended skimming the last 4 stories. Very disappointed.

I keep thinking I'm not a fan of short stories, but this is the second short story collection I read this year that I really enjoyed. I found the stories in this collection to be so engaging and interesting. I didn't read this book from beginning to end like I would a novel, I instead choose a different short story every night to read and that was quite enjoyable.

"The house is a body, a body houses souls." I love books where the title is defined in the book. I love the cover of A House is a Body by Shruti Swamy; it invites you to find out more. This debut collection of stories is set in the United States and in India. It picks up on many Indian cultural concepts. Representation in books matters. Unfortunately, I find myself not the reader for this book, but I look forward to seeing what this debut author writes next.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/08/a-house-is-body.html

Reviewed for NetGalley and publisher's book blog tour.

<b>A House is a Body</b> is an intimate collection of stories that explores a range of human emotions, conditions and relationships. It is tender and riveting. The prose is simple yet searing. Even though each story embodied a different soul, together these stories came together to reveal a humanity that is full of beauty, hope and pain.

<i>"She was like hearing your own heartbeat. If you stop for a minute and are entirely still you can hear it. All along she's with you, but you never notice until you think to notice."</i>

In this passage Swamy is talking of mothers but in her intuitive way her female characters call to attention many nuanced perspectives of looking at the world.

<i>"When he lifted his eyes to me for a moment I felt the wind knocked out: I was a bell, and he'd rung me."</i>

<b>A House is a Body</b> using electric prose and imagery to bring both the realistic and surreal alive. It is definitely worth your time to pick this book up and steep in its well of emotions.

I have always been a fan of short story collections. I love that you can finish one relatively fast and not feel that gravitational pull back to the story when you are unable to read them. But I also love when short stories intertwine together leaving you unable to step away. So when Algonquin Books reached out to me about A House is a Body, of course I said yes to reading it!

It is hard to believe this is Shruti Swamy’s debut collection. The stories are woven together so beautifully with their underlying themes of inevitable change, tragedy, love, and family. The mere fact that these stories are capable of connecting while exploring fantasy, reality, and somewhere in between is a testament to Swamy’s writing.

The characters in A House is a Body often are dealing with loss in some way. A loss of a child, a sibling, a parent, or the loss of time. And each is trying to find a way to live again after such a great loss. But there are other stories, such as Wedding Season, that has a certain tenderness that suggests that there is hope, a hope that one will be able to live again, just in a different way.

I love when a story not only makes you think, but when a story keeps you guessing. That, I believe, is exceptionally hard to do in a short story collection, but Swamy nailed it. Do yourself a favor and read this collection!

My favorites:

-The Laughter Artist

-Night Garden

-Wedding Season

I am already looking forward to what Swamy writes next!

A House is a Body is packed with twelve short stories that share a common floor of unavoidable change and the ultimate acceptance of it all as the collection opens doors to many places, perspectives, and possibilities through characters that are dipped in blue.

Trigger warnings: grief, depression, sexual assault, loss of loved ones, animal cruelty.

Blindness ★★★★☆

A woman finds herself blinded by the darkness of depression after being left by her first husband, after the death of her second husband, after having no option left but to live with the unscrupulous younger brother of her late husband because two children needed to survive too. This one leaves a bad taste in mouth but a taste you shouldn't choose to ignore.

Mourners ★★★★☆

The death of a sister and the cries of a baby makes this story about a couple mourning yet living. A prose filled with descriptions of everything blue—blue tiles, blue walls, blue towels, blue skirt, and a blur air. Needless to say, the blueness is synonymous and indicative of the tears that haven't flowed.

My brother at the station ★★★★☆

A short prose from a sister whose brother has always seen what she and many never can. With a mysterious trail of dark thoughts, conversations that are borderline scary, and an end that doesn't satisfy as much, this story starts off strong but isn't the best.

The Siege ★★★★★

First of the stories set in antiquity, a queen runs through the rules set for her a woman, the parts she couldn't jump into as a woman, and the unfortunate bits of happiness she gets from a girl in the gardens. Damp with the grief of losing a young son and the appalled looks upon suggesting surrender during a war since death is inevitable, this is one of the best stories.

Earth Pleasures ★★★★★

A mix of mythical and surreal, this story around a young woman meeting the Hindu deity Krishna against an urban backdrop is also painted with blue strokes. The serenity of this mythical realism is gently portrayed by poetically describing even the simple acts of being a human—like crying. One of the longer stories, it stays in the heart for even longer.

Wedding Season ★★★★★

Two women in love attend a family wedding where the promised progressiveness of people is challenged when the protagonist's choice doesn't fall within the traditional boundaries. Complexity clashes with simplicity because love is love but isn't deemed as love by everyone around, in this story of sneaking feelings.

The Laughter Artist ★★★★★

A mystifying story of a woman making art out of laughter, displaying it on the canvas of what makes life, of what makes one afraid, of what lies ahead if not nothing. The saddening realities of being a child of immigrants, a daughter who couldn't see her mother during the last moment, a person who wants to cry, and a person who can only laugh. Easily the best of the collection.

Night Garden ★★★★☆

One of the experimental ideas, this quick story at the very last is concise, crisp, and curt as it plays a face-off between a cobra and a dog in the dark night, and the conversation which is actually a caustic argument draws highly from a married couple driving towards the destruction of their marriage.

The rest of the stories are intriguing, enticing, and poetically worded but dangle on a bar of personal taste. While each of them hold the possibility of soaring high or falling flat, they do make a tapestry on which the above great stories can shine. Overall, an excellent collection that is meant for lovers of short story, unconventional prose, and unexpected unfolding.

Everyone, read this short story collection - I don't usually go for short stories in my read and this one really surprised me and I LOVED IT!! A HOUSE IS A BODY was a riveting collection of deep soul searching stories written in a prose so magical I was immersed into this debut.

A collection of twelve stories spanning the globe set between the United States, India and beyond, with each story unique and touching upon important themes about family, parenthood, sisterhood and brotherhood, and most of all, love. With a dream like quality, and very unique style of writing which I loved and devoured, Swamy transported me through these stories into worlds and experiences both fantastic and mythologic, and reality as well.

The stories were very well written and very poignant. Though this could be read in one sitting, I enjoyed the stories individually taking the time to savor and reflect first, then moving on to the next story. Just like a box of chocolates, each had its own unique flavor and I just never know what I will be getting next, but they were all oh so good.

I highly recommend this amazing short story collection. I am excited to see how you will savor this highly anticipated collection.

What a collection! Love and loss, marriage and parenthood, India and America, tears and laughter...each story is its own little world, vivid as a jewel. I couldn't put it down.

Many thanks for the opportunity to read and review!

This book contains 12 short stories set in the US, India, and Germany each of which illuminates the characters' struggles of love, grief, home and sense of belonging. I really enjoyed some of the stories in this collection but I also failed to connect and engage to some of it. Perhaps I wasn't in the right mindset while reading this. All in all a powerful read with a lot of diversity and some are unique in its own way. It is meant to be savored not devoured. Or you can do both! Definitely will recommend to all of you who enjoy short stories.

"A dazzling new literary voice" is right—this collection was stunning, hypnotic, and voyeuristic in the best way.

A House Is a Body by Shruti Swamy is a remarkable collection of short stories. Invasive with its characters, unflinching in its portrayals of the modern Indian woman and her experiences. Some of my favorite stories combined India's mythic roots with modern problems, and others told devastating tales of secrecy and loss.

Some of my favorite stories in the collection:

Earthly Pleasures - 5 stars
A woman meets Krishna, the divine lover in Hindu mythology. Her tale of loneliness, heartbreak , and alcohol intersecting with Krishna's check-ins into her life was beautiful—made even more so by their interesting relationship.

Mourners - 4.5 stars
A heavy-hitter. This tale of one woman's death—no longer a wife, a sister, a mother, a friend—and her family's attempt to salvage the situation as grief spins them out into spirals. Beautiful prose, interesting commentaries on how grief patches itself with grief.

The Laughter Artist - 5 stars
I don't even want to describe this one. It's perfect.

If you're interested in short stories, definitely pick this one up. If you're into feminism, motherhood, women loving women, modern juxtaposed with old... definitely pick this one up.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Though I have loved a few collections over the years, short stories aren't exactly my cup of tea. This collection had a good mix of reality and fantasy; it was, at times, very dreamlike. Sometimes it worked but sometimes it didn't. I'll admit, even the stories I enjoyed, I found them somewhat confusing. I'm not sure if it was the writing style or the nature of the story itself. I loved her inclusion of (sometimes) difficult parental feelings and appreciated that, in many of the stories, she gave a much-needed original voice to women, wives and mothers. I did think Swarmy put some beautiful passages on the page, but I was left wanting more from so many of the stories.

The short stories in this collection brought the author’s appreciation and memories of India vividly to life.

The beautiful use of language in these stories made them so compelling to read. No two stories were similar. They told of memories from childhood, marriage, motherhood, and love. Most of the stories took place in India. Those that did not talked of memories from India. The nostalgia was touching and descriptive.

Of the twelve stories in the collection, “My Brother at the Station,” in which the narrator discusses memories of her brother from childhood into adulthood, and “Wedding Season,” with two females lovers trying to fit in around a family’s traditional Indian wedding, both stood out as most memorable. That was a hard distinction to make, and many of the stories left an impression.

Overall, I’d give this short story collection 4 out of 5 stars. The word choices were powerful and evocative. I’d recommend these stories to adults who enjoy Indian stories and literary fiction.

Taking place in both the United States and India, these short stories were both everything and nothing I expected when I first read about this debut. Shruti Swamy’s writing is so beautiful, and all her stories have a dreamlike quality even when she’s writing painful truths about motherhood, death, identity, and isolation, and desire. Her stories make you feel part of her characters’ world, both the physical space they occupy as well as their inner lives and identities as mothers, immigrants, and romantic partners.

Even though this is a debut collection, it reads like a masterclass of short story writing. I can’t stop thinking about a lot of the imagery I read, from the more fantastical to something as simple as a baby about to cry. If you’re a short story lover like I am, I highly recommend you check this one out!

I really struggled to rate this book. While I really liked this author's writing -- it was almost hypnotic in its poetry -- I didn't find myself particularly drawn to many of the stories. I even read several more than once to try and get a deeper handle on what she was saying, but I fear many of these stories will not stay with me very long. I'm finding most of them difficult to remember even the day after finishing this collection.

Out of all the stories, I found Mourners to be one of the few I think I liked. Perhaps, the title story as well. These two stories about the absent mother -- although different in how the mothers were absent, physically v. emotionally. However, while I know the author is going for deeper meaning, I just couldn't get there in my own reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the arc of this book. It has not influenced my review.