Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this title, but my reading interests have changed. I will not be finishing this book, but look forward to others in the future.

I enjoyed it, but honestly the stories weren’t especially memorable. I had to go back and read the blurb to remember that I’d even read it. The title and cover where what drew me.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

The writing and the details here are spectacular. Example:
“Our town had always wintered the way towns do: gas bills and window plastic, blankets and boots. We bought cream for our cracked skin and socks for our numb feet. We knew how we felt when our extremities faded temporarily away, and we knew how much we hurt when they prickled back to life. -4

A few of the stories in this selection of short stories were completely gripping. I found Horrocks to write incredibly relatable to common characters. Many of the stories touched on loneliness and belonging in beautiful ways. As a School Psychologist, I found the story Teacher to be particularly compelling and realistic. Overall, many of the stories in the second half of the book fell flat for me including the title story. While many of the stories had similar themes, they were not cohesive enough for me to really want to keep reading as a got further in,

My review for Shelf Awareness Pro is here: https://shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3890#m50850

The review was also cross-posted to Smithsonian BookDragon: http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/life-among-the-terranauts-by-caitlin-horrocks-in-shelf-awareness/

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.

In this fourteen short story collection, Caitlin Horrocks explores a variety of themes including relationships, future sustainability of civilizations, and human desires. In full honesty, I didn't feel any of the stories were memorable enough for me to review them each on their own.





Publication Date 12/01/21
Goodreads review 26/01/21

The first half of this book reminded me of [book:Beartown|33413128]. I picked this up for the title, assuming there would be a sci-fi theme and not realizing it was short stories. I was pretty surprised with how much I enjoyed it. The language is really beautiful, and each story is just the right length, self-contained and whole.

Recommended for all general fiction collections.

The stories in Life Among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks are filled with people puzzling over their lives and a world that holds more questions than answers; they don't even know what questions to ask; they try to master the words themselves. They hold onto the past; they try to escape; they risk going into the unknown; they make a new start.

I lived in the aura of the first story, The Sleep, for days.


"Bounty was an assertion, an act of faith. It looked best when left unexamined." ~from Life Among the Terranauts by Caitlin Horrocks
"Our children came home and told us that we were the suckers of the last century," living in a town with no future and no prospects. Immigrants had come for the free land, and stayed out of pure persistence.

One winter the Rasmussen family decide to hibernate until spring. Soon other families also hibernate, saving money on food and heat, children happy not to stand in freezing weather for a school bus. The town becomes a media sensation. How to explain why they stayed, why they slept?

The story was unsettling, and yet, somehow comforting. The quotation from James Joyce's The Dead stayed in my head as I thought of a world sleeping under an eternal, gentle snowfall.

In Norwegian for Troll, Annika returns to the remote Keweenaw Peninsula to aid her elderly mother and stays on after her death, stuck in her family's past, until she remembers her immigrant ancestors had risked a journey into the future.

While Rose sorts her mother's estate she wonders about her mother's enigmatic relationship with her roommate, Bev.

A teacher realizes she can't save every disturbed child who comes through her classroom.

A woman at a party decides to sleep with a man because he is going to jail.

Teenage girls looking for guaranteed happiness turn to Magic- 8 Balls and Ouija boards.

A divorced father helps his estranged son, wishing he had advice for living in an uncertain world.

An elderly woman knows she is in her last days. She pities the priest. "How endless, the secrets of other. How endless, the reassurance they need,"she thinks.

A woman loses everything on the Oregon Trail, except her own life.

A traveler abroad seeks answers to questions, dreaming of a new life before he is forced to return home.

The tour guide at Paradise Lodge promises to show the 'real Peru,' but all he has are stories to fill the hungry tourists. When he gives them the real thing, he discovers their inability to comprehend what they are seeing.

A woman realizes that her childhood memories are unreliable.

The last story, Life Among the Terranauts, is also about a retreat from the world, but is filled with sinister overtones. A group of volunteers are paid to live in a biodome. They had been chosen for their "fortitude, for pigheaded faith," but 542 days in, with 188 to go, food is scarce and things are falling apart. One man has embraced this life, proclaiming they are a new society, a new start for humanity, calling himself Adam and the narrator Eve. It is chilling.

Fortitude and faith. It's what we all need in this life.

The writing is fantastic, with sentences that stuck in my head.

Seed hulls scatter dark across the sinking snow, punctuation marks without words.
Growing up had been so far a great un-knowing, an erosion of the facts that had once seemed very clear and precious to her.
The silences that exist inside all stories.
There is no blade that mends, they sing. Only the thread going forward. Only our readiness for the cut.

I received an ARC in exchange for a fair and unbiased review

Caitlin Horrocks offers much life to explore in this collection. These stories are literary, relevant, and well-told...more work from an author who sparks creativity and captures experience.