{"id":1566,"date":"2023-02-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T19:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1566"},"modified":"2025-01-01T08:35:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T19:35:30","slug":"kaleidoscopes-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2023\/02\/18\/kaleidoscopes-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaleidoscopes in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>B.G. Rogers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>B Press Publishers<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, February 18th 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">B. G. Rogers\u2019 debut short story collection reminds me a little of Angela Carter\u2019s <em>The Bloody Chamber<\/em>, vivid tales that twist the fairy-tale form in dark and disturbing ways. Some, such as \u2018Great Grandmother\u2019s Stories\u2019, in which a young girl is hunted down by enormous seagulls who need human blood to digest the plastic that is their primary source of food, adopt a new and contemporary shape. Others, like \u2018Tiger Food\u2019, which gives a more realistic appraisal of what would happen if a tiger <em>really<\/em> came to tea, or \u2018The Girl in the Pied Dress\u2019, in which the Pied Piper is reimagined as a teenage girl burnt at the stake for attempting to save her contemporaries from the depredations of a predatory Laird, take familiar stories to unexpected places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Strong female characters abound, and, although grim, the writing is shot through with flashes of humour and humanity, most notably from Death, who here adopts a female guise: my favourite piece, \u2018Dating Life\u2019, depicts her as a solo mother struggling to cope both raising two children \u2013 Truth and Fallacy \u2013 on her own and the frustrations of sharing an office with her ex. <em>Kaleidoscopes in the Dark<\/em> is a book not easily forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>B.G. Rogers B Press Publishers Otago Daily Times, February 18th 2023 B. G. Rogers\u2019 debut short story collection reminds me a little of Angela Carter\u2019s The Bloody Chamber, vivid tales that twist the fairy-tale form in dark and disturbing ways. Some, such as \u2018Great Grandmother\u2019s Stories\u2019, in which a young girl is hunted down by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[432,370,18,375,407],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-b-g-rogers","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-short-story","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}