Much more eerie and unsettling than her previous two collections. Similar to Samanta Schweblin's Mouthful of Birds. ( )

These are the kind of strange, life-like stories I enjoy but likely won't remember. They address the world as it is today, the feeling of driving too fast around blind curves, the dangers we face from strangers, those we love, and ourselves and the opacity of the motivations of all three. Well-written insights make up for a few instances of sloppy editing. ( )

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for my ARC.

Laura Van Den Berg kicks off the collection with a quote by Clarice Lispector - Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself? Berg's invocation really resonates by the end of the first story and wholly makes effect at the close of the collection. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is features stories told from the perspectives of different women and Berg explores many more themes throughout the collection. Each story is really well put together with all ending in a punchy finish. That is to say that they close most often in a line that wraps things up in a unique way I have not seen in some time. The stories really do well at pulling you in and turning pages and in that way it is a very fast read but it is not light reading. It was been a very long time since I have come across a writer quite like Laura van den Berg; her writing is laser focused on moments - details - slices of life repeated and masticated and re-worn over and I found the stories to be highly original. There is something of Ray Bradbury and J.G. Ballard in these stories in the inner-monologues and inner-space explored, in the emotional effects created by way of style and structure. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is a summer read that you will be bound to be treading over again into the fall, winter, and well into 2021. These are stories not only worth reading but rereading and living with. Also of special note is the structuring of the book itself. The stories like a great anthology are paced and set against / paired with each other in a way that feels purposeful.

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears in the best way possible treads over well worn ground but in highly unique and nuanced ways that will stick with you. Highly recommended. ( )

LJ review:

In her newest short fiction collection, van den Berg (The Third Hotel) serves up an assortment of complex and satisfying not–quite–ghost stories. These deceptively dense tales often visit similar territory—women, less successful younger sisters or slightly flawed daughters, who have missed some imperceptible benchmark in life—yet there is no sense of sameness. Rather, in stories ranging from “Your Second Wife,” in which a woman makes a living impersonating dead spouses, to the discomfiting “Karolina,” where in the aftermath of a Mexico City earthquake a woman’s homeless sister-in-law forces her to confront a buried history of family violence, van den Berg mines the broad overlap among loss, defeat, and horror with a deft touch, backlit by the unsettling effects of travel, natural disasters, death, and that thin membrane between the supernatural and the simply strange. The ghosts in her stories are her narrators’ better, unachieved selves, the dread embodied in the realization of how easy it is to miss life’s transitions from before to after.

VERDICT These well-crafted and intelligent stories about the many ways a life can be haunted will gratify readers who enjoy perceptive, slightly gothic tales. ( )