Comfort Me With Apples

Comfort Me with Apples

By Catherynne M.Valente

Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze...

But everything is perfect. Isn't it?

I was so pleasantly surprised that this book qualified for one of the reading prompts, and wasn't a total slog to get through, that I re-committed to the challenge after a three month break.  We'll see how long it lasts. 

Anyway, I found Comfort Me pleasing and distracting, tantalizing enough to get you hooked, but nothing that required strain to finish.  I will admit to spoiling myself by flipping randomly through the pages and noticing a key part of the Fox's conversation with her about what her husband's name was.  So I can't speak on whether or not I would have "figured it out" before Sophia does. 

I enjoyed this version of the story, although my initial reaction was disappointment that it was not much like Bluebeard. However, in retrospect, it is very much like Bluebeard - the secret murdered wives and so on.  I guess what I really want is a very good re-telling of Bluebeard, and not necessarily an unsettling version of the creation of man.  

It's sharp and pointed, and, if drawing accurately from the source material, a very unsettling examination of misogyny at the core of some of the world's largest religious myths. I would absolutely not call it a "thriller" or even really a mystery.  It's a little gothic story, straight from god's mouth to your ears. 

08: A Book Under 250 Pages