These five dark and delicately written stories unfold in fragile worlds, where animal behaviors parallel the ways in which human beings interact.
Siamese fighting fish, cockroaches, a cat, a snake, and a strange fungus become mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature. In each tale, Nettel creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters explore how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves, clandestinely, irrevocably. In writing that is precise, subtle, and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the unsettling extraordinary.
