I encountered Nino Cipri’s stories twice recently – in the Transcendent anthology of best transgender-themed speculative fiction and in Capricious magazine’s Gender Diverse Pronouns issue. In both cases Cipri’s stories were among the highlights for me, so I didn’t hesitate much before requesting Homesick. They are a writer I want to read more of.
Homesick is a very tight collection. It doesn’t just present every story the author’s written up to publication – the nine stories contained in the book share some thematic concerns, as well as a general emotional vibe of unsettling strangeness. More than science fiction or fantasy, Homesick brings to mind ghost stories or weird fiction: sure, there is a time machine in one of the stories or superhero/magical girls in another. But more often than not, the characters have to contend with something inexpicable: a poltergeist in the closet, vomitting up iron keys, the ocean behind their clients’ couch – and the magical girls have all been resurrected after meeting tragic fates.
When I think of homesickness, I think of profound unfamiliarity; of being in a place or situation that is not mine; of not having any company I could rely on for help or comfort. That is the vibe I largely got from Cipri’s stories, where the characters are frequently lonely and have to deal with alienation in their professional and personal lives, as well as in a larger existential sense. The best example might be Presque Vu, where the protagonist’s job as a driver for an Uber-like company leaves him shunning the company of most people, and where all the characters are haunted, both by strange objects turning up out of nowhere (keys you have to throw up, cassette tape tangled in your hair when you wake up, strange phone calls) and by mysterious wraiths that crowd the streets of their city.
This is not to say that the stories are necessarily always sad or cynical. While they are often fairly unnerving and frequently end before a complete resolution, the characters do sometimes manage to achieve some connection, however temporary, that provides them with a measure of comfort. There is also a lot of humour in dialogues (which sometimes sounds like the characters speak nothing but one-liners, but not frequently). And playing with form! One story is a magazine quiz, one a trascript of audio recordings, one contains excerpts from documentary interviews. This also imbued the collection with a sense of playfulness that relieved the often difficult emotional content.
Homesick is a very strong collection that offers a wonderful dose of speculative fiction from the more literary, border-blurring end of the spectrum. If you enjoyed stuff like Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, I think you will enjoy Homesick as well.
Thank you to the publisher, Dzanc Books, for sending me an electronic review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
