4 out of 4 stars
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Cherries in the Snow is a collection of short stories written by Jonathan Douglas Duran. The book is fictional and can be classified under the Other Fiction genre as all of the stories do not fit under any of the other genres.
This book contains ten short stories, the first being titled ‘Cherries in the Snow’ hence the title of the book. It is about a little girl and her father who are walking in the snowing woods in the early morning. It is told from the girl’s point of view. Her father is disturbed and distraught because of his wife’s death and this leads him to take the action that he does. This story explains a child’s imagination and shows that things are seen and understood differently through a child’s eyes.
Some of the other stories contain excerpts of people’s thoughts. Phantom Pains is a man wondering over his missing finger and the imaginary pain that he feels there. Other stories such as A Decent Story and An Indecent Story are both intimately linked, each a different view about the same situation. Another story is about one man’s experience with meeting the devil himself. And yet another is about a barber and shows that sometimes what we perceive to be bad is perhaps good if we understood the full depth of the situation. Of course, when reviewing short stories such as these, it is difficult to summarize the story without giving spoilers, because the crux of the story is dependent on much of the storyline.
The one story that especially caught my attention is called The Crash and is about a man who stows away in a department store and develops a strange relationship with the mannequins.
The last story Nadja seems to tie all the threads of the previous stories together, yet it is the strangest one of them all and the reader is still left wondering about its reality.
Overall, I found this book to be an interesting read, although a few readers may find some of the stories to have rather strange twists and morbid subjects. Another thing that I picked up from reading the book is that most, if not all of the stories have some mention of snow and blood, and I think that the author purposefully used these as symbols. This creates a rather intense imagery of vivid red blood against pure white snow, which is comparable to the image created by the title.
On the whole the book was very well written. The stories were intriguing, interesting and thought provoking, all good qualities of short stories. I would recommend it to anyone who likes something different to capture their imagination. Therefore, I would give this book a four out of four stars.
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Cherries in the Snow
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