Press 53
210 pages, $17.95

Review by Carmen Maria Machado

The interwoven collection—the hybrid of the story collection and novel—has always been a fascinating genre. It takes elements from each parent—the satisfaction of novel-length exploration, the brilliant individual facets of the story collection—and turns it something entirely new, and, deployed properly, entirely gratifying. In the spirit of that genre comes Bones of an Inland Sea, the newest book from Mary Akers.

The linked stories in Bones progress in rough, but not exact chronological order, from the late 19th century to an unspecified dystopian future, telling first the story of a shipwrecked sea captain’s wife, and, last, that of a prisoner of a cult on a floating island. In between, we learn the intimate details of the lives of the many people that link them to one another across the intervening centuries. These bookending stories mirror each other, both following a woman lost among many, from whom love has been snatched away. Continue reading →