Sacraments for the Unfitby Sarah Tolmie
The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic brought out the ritualist in many of us. In this collection of contemporary weird short fiction, a variety of different persons and beings try to fill up their days in varying states of isolation and mystery, real or imaginary. An angel outlives the Apparat that used to employ him; a deity complains about no longer feeling seen; a museum curator living alone begins to inexplicably alter; a medievalist suffering from vision loss gets into a strange relationship with the ghost of the codicologist M. R. James; enigmatic objects begin to work themselves out of the ground by the grave of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, prompting scholarly speculation. Sacraments For the Unfit is a series of vignettes about the transformations that can happen while staying in place. Advance Praise
“These stories could be the mad progeny of Umberto Eco and Ursula
K. LeGuin: fiendishly cunning thought-twisters that shimmer with
compassion and charisma.”
Reviews
"Sarah Tolmie’s new collection, Sacraments for the Unfit, takes on
isolation, alienation, and the problem of connection in a gorgeously
contemporary take on the weird. The stories address the last several
years directly, imagining reconfigurations of modern life alongside
the fantastical and bizarre. They highlight new forms and relations of
divinity, contemporary technological experiences, and the vagaries of
academic life with deftly distant style and elegant estrangement. Each
story takes full advantage of its central speculative premise,
imagining the world through the eyes of the impossible....
ISBN: 978-1-61976-240-4 (13 digit)
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