Ramona Ausubel

4.5 I think this would be classified as cli-fi - sort of a cautionary tale about climate change with a basic scenario that seems a little Frankenstein-ish. I loved it though because it was so unique and so compelling - it begs for discussion. Jane is the single mother of two teenage daughters (Vera, 12 and Eve, 15). Her husband, a anthropologist famous for his work on the Frozen Man died in an accident on the job. Jane is now employed as a research assistant, earning a pittance, though she show more had been studying anthropology herself and had been her husband's (almost) equal partner in his work. She has dragged the girls along on a project for her professor - studying the permafrost in Siberia. The two girls, bored and neglected wander the landscape and discover a frozen fully formed baby wooly mammoth. So some of this is a bit far-fetched. Of course the (male) professor and his grad student, also male take credit for the discovery and begin to profit from it. A chance encounter with a super-rich eccentric woman at a gala fundraiser for the university/anthro department (for which Jane was instructed by the professor to dress attractively) coincides with the last straw for her when another one of her ideas is appropriated (stolen) by her male colleagues. The eccentric owns a 'menagerie' in Italy, including an elephant, and the idea to impregnate it with the wooly mammoth DNA is hatched between the women, with Vera and Eve as accomplices. Vera is anxious and worries about all that could go wrong, not the least is her mother in jail for stealing from the lab, and Eve is impulsive and cheers her mother on. There are all sorts of layers and ethical dilemmas here: gender inequity in the sciences, using DNA to try to revive extinct species, the ways we treat the world that causes extinction in the first place, the fact that those with obscene amounts of money (think Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos) don't need to play by the rules - and then there is this family of women, sorely missing the husband/Dad - Vera thinks they are now like a lopsided table - and the age of the girls as they are on the cusp of young adulthood with 'big kid' problems - Eve has met a boy on their travels and has become sexually active, and an amazing, beautiful relationship between the two sisters, that was maybe my favorite part. Edgy, thrilling, intellectual, heart-warming - this book had me all over the place emotionally - and fully invested in the outcome for all the players. show less

Oh Ramona Ausubel, you do delight me! This is the first story I read from your collection [Awayland] and it whisked me indeed to The Dream Isles.

Long time ago I lived in Alexandria, Egypt. i wish you and I had gone to the Cairo museum together. Instead of being put off by the overwhelming antiquity--What germs might I be breathing in was one line of thought I had, age 16--with you I would have had the time of my life.

Who is this wild writer named Ramona Ausubel?

I oohed. I gasped. I shook my head. I re-read frequently. And I was absolutely engaged in every page of these bizarre stories!

This collection is nearly impossible to classify, but let me give you a small example. In "Chest of Drawers" a man whose wife is pregnant, suddenly develops little drawers in his chest. They try to get help but the medical field is baffled and curious, and offers no treatment. Thus the couple decide to live with it. While show more waiting for his wife's doctor's appointment, the husband sees a brochure and likes a photo of the smiling male model. He tears it out, folds it up and puts it in one of his drawers. That is the first of odds and ends that he puts in there.

Does that sound weird? It is weird! And all the stories are bizarre like that, usually to do with odd, highly imaginative alterations of the human body. Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy or magic realism? All? Or none? None of those genres fit perfectly, really. She might have invented a new one because these are normal human beings where each story is at its heart emotional, emotions that we can connect with given the circumstances.

There are a couple less interesting stories, but the others are absolutely fantastic--fantastic as in "fantastically good" and "fantastical."

I don't know a thing about Ramona Ausubel but would I read her again? I WOULD! show less

I don't always read a short story collection straight through; if fun titles catch my attention I'm liable to begin with those stories. Ausubel's titles didn't seduce me, so I read this book straight through. And though I admired some of the writing in the first few stories, I can't say I actually liked them. But then things started getting weird in a wonderful way, and I liked every story thereafter. I wonder if I'd read the stories in a different order if I'd have appreciated the early show more ones more.

I love the surreal stories here--a man's chest becomes a "chest of drawers" during his wife's pregnancy; a girl plays catch with a long-dead Confederate general--but I think my favorite story here might be the one that makes magic out of ingredients as workaday as a grocery clerk-turned-dental assistant and another grocery clerk ready to turn into herself.

The eleven stories in this collection are divided into sections: Birth, Gestation, Conception and Love. This added another dimension to some of the stories that weren't obvious fits in their categories and inspired me to think about them in a way that made my reading experience richer. show less