A quick, savage novella that combines 1950's domesticity with a dark, biblical Bluebeard reimagining. Sophia is a housewife in a not-quite right house, in a not-quite right neighborhood, and is hemmed in by a host of strict community rules. The story captures a few days in her life in the gated community of Arcadia, as she spirals closer and closer to a dark discovery. It's tough to talk about this book without including spoilers, but I will say that I adored the tight, claustrophobic nature of the prose; a novella is the perfect format to capture the atmosphere. There are certainly thriller elements to this, but I was reminded more of classic gothic novels such as Jane Eyre and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as the unreliable narrator and the unsettling atmosphere conspire to form a story that oozes with tension. Valente is a master wordsmith and her prose was as sharp as ever, but I was also impressed by the pointed commentary on gender and religion. The short length of the story means that subtly goes a bit out the window, but I enjoyed this as a reminder of the darker and more horrific aspects of biblical lore; the Old Testament violence and fury that transfixed me as a youth.

This was sort of a fantasy / greek myth Stepford Wives and I didn't find it did anything particularly interesting with the tropes.

I was so excited tone approved of this book and it did not disappoint. If you love thrillers check this one out

"Comfort Me With Apples is a terrifying new thriller from bestseller Catherynne M. Valente, for fans of Gone Girl and Spinning Silver.

Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze....

But everything is perfect. Isn't it?"

Here for everything Cat! Even if this has a horrid ass cover.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this book to review through NetGalley.

Thoughts: I love Valente's writing style and this was amazingly well written. This is such a creepy, excellent, mystery thriller but still has heavy fantasy/mythology tones to it. This was beautifully done and completely engaging.

This book focuses on Sophia, a woman who is supposed to be perfectly pleasant, who was built just for her husband. I loved watching Sophia unwrap the mystery of the town she lives in and of her place there. I loved the twists at the end as well; there is a lot of irony here and the story was cleverly put together.

Of course the whole book is written in Valente’s amazingly lush and beautiful writing style. The imagery in here is amazing and the story strikes a perfect tone of dark creepiness while at the same time questioning mythology, religion, and the place of women in both.

My Summary (5/5): Overall this was an amazing read, that I absolutely adored. If you are a Valente fan you’ll love this. If you enjoy creepy stories that poke at traditional mythology you’ll enjoy this too. This is amazing and less abstract than a lot of Valente’s books, making it much more accessible to a larger group of readers.

Considering this is only a short novella it's particularly noteworthy to say I DNF'd this book at 50%. It's extra important for short fiction to be engaging from the start I think as there is a very limited frame of time to build characters/worlds/narrative; but, I found myself losing interest fairly quickly. I think the writing gets bogged down in trying too hard to be atmospheric and delivering visual prose that it just becomes hard to read and it actually takes you out of the moment. I mainly picked it up as Spinning Silver is one of my favourite books, I don't really know why the two are compared beyond that they're both retellings.

4/5

The gated community of Arcadia Gardens may seem perfect, but within the confines of the neighborhood, a poisonous truth begins to fester, threatening the very serenity promised to its inhabitants. At surface level, adoring housewife Sophia couldn't ask for a more perfect circumstance. Her life in Arcadia Gardens, her house, and her increasingly absent husband provide her with everything she could possibly imagine. Still, there are things that beg to be questioned, like the strange lock of hair decidedly not hers, or the sliver of bone expertly placed in her knife block. It seems that things might not be as splendid as they seem, and when Sophia goes digging she unearths something that could destroy her seemingly perfect life in seconds.

Comfort Me With Apples is a fantastically dark thriller that delighted and surprised me in unexpected ways. With a bit of The Yellow Wallpaper vibe interspersed throughout this strange mystery, Valente crafts a story made to be questioned at its core. A slowly decaying fruit of a novel that becomes harder and harder to ignore. While not everyone will love the twist of the knife designed, nor the lack of an accurate Gone Girl comparison, those that enjoy being unsettled will love where this novel takes them. Catherynne Valente has always excelled in her prose and Comfort Me With Apples demonstrates that clearly, with gloriously strange, and utterly imaginative language. The rules of the gated community, partnered against the actual storyline cultivates a sense of unease that preys upon the mind until right up at the end. An atmosphere that becomes increasingly more and more ominous. Where the story takes an unanticipated turn, is in the biblical elements included. These surprised me more than I thought they would, but thought they ultimately flushed out the commentary and made the reveal at the end all the more horrific. It really makes me want to go back and read the story all over again to see where the paving was laid. A lot of people have already commented on the incorrect marketing surrounding this book, and while I don't think this was anything like Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, or Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, the domestic thriller and fantasy vibe is definitely present here. The only thing that really irked me with Comfort Me With Apples was the length. There was a lot of build-up in the first two-thirds of the novel, and then the confrontation at the end left me with so many questions that could have been avoided had time been taken to draw out the reveal. Key opinion with this one: I just wanted more. Catherynne Valente certainly knows how to write an idyllic story with otherwise sinister undertones, however, something that will be perfect for the upcoming Halloween season.

Trigger Warnings: death, murder, gaslighting

Will be posted on my blog upon publication

The book was somewhat weird, but I enjoyed it. It could be used to discussed religious views, roles of males and females.

I'm sad to say this book was not as interesting and thrilling as the blurb made it out to be. After I finished it I felt like I just wasted my time. Perhaps I have set very high expectations because of the fact that this was deemed as a Gone Girl type of thriller, but I got none of that from the story. I don't really have much to say anymore except I just did not like this book at all.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review





<i>Comfort Me with Apples</i> is a strange, claustrophobic little gem which explores many themes. It's told in gorgeous, sensory prose with a distinct fairy tale slant - but don't expect any happy endings here. Without wishing to divulge spoilers, this ends in the only way it could - satisfactory but not what the reader is hoping for.



As well as taking a look at cautionary fairytales - Bluebeard, for example, this novella also takes a step into biblical mythos. It's a pretty intense metaphor for women being conditioned to subsume much of their personalities in order to please a man. Of course, like all 'created women' myths, things go wrong because ultimately when you create something sentient, it belongs then not to you, its creator, but always and finally to itself. (Think of Galatea or Bloudeuwedd.) Instead of preaching a curb to feminine curiosity - which seems to be the moral of Bluebeard - <i>Comfort Me with Apples</i> praises pursuit of the truth. You are entitled to make decisions having been made fully aware of the full facts and conversely, you cannot make an informed decision if you've been lied to. On the other hand, understanding the truth will not in and of itself free you. You must make a choice to act. Hoping the person who has lied to you will be different or change is sweet but naive - often with fatal consequences.



A line of King Lear kept popping up in my mind as I read this - 'As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they torment us for our sport'. There is a strong element of that here. Those responsible for creation in this instance treat living, sentient creatures as science projects; they assume their creations to be insensate and no more real than if they were genuinely made out of dust. On top of that, the main perpetrator has the ego-centric outlook of a child or a psychopath. He genuinely believes he is the victim whilst refusing to acknowledge that anyone else is real apart from his 'father'. As a sad little side note, there is a quick look at how a 'daughter' is less valued than a 'son' and women are taught to think less of themselves and put men first.



While I no longer fully agree that that is a universal position and much of the baked in sexism in western society is being uprooted, it still exists in many areas of the world and being forced to examine that has its place.



Overall this was an excellent novella - a fairy tale which read like a thriller, a literary novel like an apple, sweet, tempting and with seeds full of cyanide. Highly recommend.

As usual, full of breathtaking Valente prose—I loved it! Very inventive and gorgeous and lush. Sophia was a beautifully vulnerable character and i did not see the twist coming. But I wanted even more from it! This is a case where the novella format left me a little sad at the end, because I felt that the characters still had a lot to show (I especially wanted to know more about Lilith). But absolutely stunning overall!

This is a difficult book to review without spoiling, but I'm going to give it a try.

At the book's beginning, you meet Sophia, who is living in a beautiful subdivision that has a surprisingly oppressive list of HOA rules. She, too, is beautiful and a perfect wife for her less perfect husband.

The sentences are beautiful.

Then some stuff happens, and some other stuff happens, and you slowly realize some things, and, if you're me, you wish you could sit down with Catherynne M. Valente and ask her some questions about the sources from which she's drawing.

It's all very pretty and strange.

Comfort Me With Apples is rich and unsettling as we follow Sophia, the perfect wife to her absentee husband, on her quest of discovery. Why is she not happy in her perfectly manicured home and her strange yet seemingly well intentioned friends? Where does her husband go for days? Why does she start finding strange things in their home that have no explanation?

Sophia should be happy. She isn’t. She has all she has ever asked for. Doesn’t she? Obviously things are not how they appear. I love the HOA bizarre and threatening tone of the rules that begin every chapter. I love the neighbors, Sophia’s friends, who are maybe human/not human. They seem to know a lot more than she does. And I actually really like Sophia. She is curious and vulnerable and a very textured character of a woman who should be happy and yet continues to pull the thread to her own unhappiness. And why shouldn’t she? Isn’t Sophia in all of us?

The story is strange and wonderful and of course, I knew exactly where it was going because of how I was raised. And that made it even more enjoyable, this very dark and twisted tale of the creation of Man and the questions the book raises about humanity and the feminine role.
The book had perfect amount of tension and suspense, as Sophia doubts herself and continues on uncovering more and more oddities, the reader happily goes on this quest with her, rooting her on. I’m not one of those people who are screaming at the book “Don’t go up there!” I’m like – “Go Lady! Unlock that door! He can’t keep those secrets forever!” And that’s exactly what Sophia does.

The book is the perfect snack of strange and beautiful, enough to give you a taste of horror without being too gory. I will be diving into her back catalog very soon!

Thanks to the publishers for sharing this one. I really liked it, though I don't know why the publishers called it a thriller and compared it with Gone Girl. It's nothing like that at all. My full review appears on Weekend Notes.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Comfort Me With Apples is a dark little book about a bright little woman. Set in a gated community, it uses the strict rules of the community in contrast to the joy of Sophia's life. Her husband is invisible at the beginning of the book but looms large in Sophia's world.

This got steadily creepier and had me really puzzling over what was strange about her world. It's so short that I won't spoil anything.

This is to be enjoyed as an odd little experiment. I was entranced the whole way and glad I knew almost nothing about it going in.

Definitely recommended for fans of the horror of suburbia.

Where do I even begin? I went into Valente's newest novella expecting a dark fairy tale retelling and got SO much more than I bargained for, in the very best way. COMFORT ME WITH APPLES is easily one of the most beautiful, horrific things I've read this year. So of course I loved it. Valente skillfully interweaves various threads of inspiration to create something unexpected, fantastical, and deeply sad. There's so little more that I can say without spoiling this book for prospective readers, which would be criminal, really. All I know for sure is that I have thought about COMFORT ME WITH APPLES almost every day since I read it, and I could write pages about the fascinating web of intertextual references that Valente weaves. And I will, just as soon as I don't run the risk of ruining the horror of that ending for anyone else!

Tiny, perfect Sophia has a tiny, perfect life in Arcadia Gardens. Her house was made just for her, and she was made just for her husband, so each day she busies herself around their home to make everything just so in case he finally returns from work. All her lovely neighbors are tremendously invested in her personal contentment: they ask her several times a day if she is happy. Really she ought to be happy, only she keeps making the most unnerving discoveries around her home. Valente's usual breath-taking prose really draws you into this unsettling novella.

Comfort Me With Apples was a short and satisfying read. The story follows Sophia, a doting housewife and resident of Arcadia Gardens, a gated community filled with friendly and familiar neighbours. Her life organized by unyielding constants and clockwork order, Sophia awakens every day with a mission to keep the perfect house, where “every molecule of every object” is familiar to her. So how, then, can she reconcile the discovery of a locked drawer containing a hairbrush made of bone and a lock of stranger’s hair? Why is Sophia, safe and loved as she is, so suddenly and easily prone to thoughts of distrust and paranoia? For what reason is she so unravelled by the unceremonious appearance of Mr. Semengelof, whose sudden presence in Arcadia fills Sophia with indescribable terror?

Valente’s novella thrives in the arena of the uncanny, where the reader cannot shake that something is inherently wrong from the very beginning. For me, this story evoked many parallels to Coraline, in part from the eeriness, but also the playfulness of language and various other reasons I can’t get into at the risk of spoiling the narrative (although I invite you to see for yourselves!). As soon as Sophia is infected by her suspicions of the community’s duplicitous intentions, she is mentally and emotionally stretched between the two cognitive worlds, grounded only by a determination for the truth. While the twist is likely one you won’t see coming, once you start getting a sense of the allusions it seems the narrative moves propulsively towards an inevitable – yet still exciting – end.

I’m seeing a few people refer to this novella as “weird” – while this story seems largely branded as a thriller and may be attracting an audience on that basis, I think it’s important to highlight the ample fantastical elements in this story, demonstrating that Valente is still within her wheelhouse while experimenting with a blending of genres. And for those who’ve already enjoyed the whimsy and referential elements of this story, I can’t recommend her Fairyland series enough!

Many thanks to NetGalley and MacMillan-Tor/Forge for this singular read!

Reviewing a book that’s power largely relies on not having the reader spoiled is tricky. Comfort Me With Apples is such a book. It’s a novella that stealthily wraps itself around you like a snake. You feel growing tension, but you can’t locate its source. And once you feel its full-forced pressure, having you in its grip, you’re completely breathless and wrecked. Catherynne M. Valente has crafted a story that eases its reader into a tale with engaging lyricism and an ominous atmosphere, reaching high intensity with brilliant reveals and conclusion.

Comfort Me With Apples is a quick read. It’s novella-length but its wordsmithery is so honeyed that it breezes by quicker than any book this size I’ve read. It finishes in a wholly satisfying way, but even so, I couldn’t help but look back at the pages and hope to be immersed in it forever. For those who’ve read Catherynne Valente, it’s no surprise that every sentence is sublime. While the story has a tall order by being conjoined with writing with colossal intimidation, it more than rises to the occasion. It’s layered, paced and escalated skillfully, and has more than enough subtext for scores of analyses.

For those wondering why I’ve written mountains of praise and almost zero story details, it’s to not ruin the experience. Comfort Me With Apples largely hooked me because its unique and enigmatic atmosphere/setting not only submerged me in its pages, but propelled me to find out how everything fit together. I thought a bunch of the strange happenings couldn’t possibly dovetail into a satisfying conclusion. I was wrong. The twists are of biblical proportions with the sweet and tart taste of an apple. If you take a bite, you’re more than likely to end up devouring the entire thing.

Thoughtful and beautifully horrific.

I gasped when I finally put together what was going on. I’ve always adored Catherynne Valente’s prose and this novella sings with poetry! I will definitely be recommending it to all!