This short story collection follows eight characters who are struggling with loss and looking for connection with the people around them. Each character, story, and their desires for connection, and how they approach it is vastly different. There is a quite lesson in each story that teaches us to listen, be brave, and appreciate what we have. The stories were/are situations that happen to many people, or at least the sentiment of it. My favorite stories we Imprinting, The Pink Door, Life Elsewhere, and The Tapor. All of the stories are beautiful and beautifully written.
This was my first Guadalupe Nettlel read and I absolutely need to read more of her work!

Thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the e-ARC!

Guadalupe Nettel’s The Accidentals is a hauntingly beautiful collection that explores estrangement, isolation, and the unknown through the lives of eight unmoored characters. Like an albatross that loses its way, Nettel’s protagonists are thrust into unfamiliar terrain by unexpected disruptions—fractured family ties, mysterious forces, and quiet battles within their own minds.

From a niece uncovering secrets about her exiled uncle to a family navigating the stifling torpor of a collapsing world, Nettel blends the real with the fantastical in stories that are piercing, unsettling, and deeply human. With razor-sharp prose and unflinching insight, The Accidentals is a masterful meditation on the fragility of connection and the resilience of the human spirit.

#bloomsbury #theaccidentals #guadalupenettel