The House Is A Body is a dreamy, poetic collection of stories, each of which makes you feel like you've landed in a scene that's already underway. The reader has to scramble a bit to figure out who the characters are and what is happening, but because the language is so lovely, this feels more like an invitation than a struggle. One aspect I didn't prefer was the sudden and sometimes unnecessary sex scenes. They were jarring when they popped up, disrupting the flow of the story. I guess sex can be like that sometimes in real life. But as a reader it made the collection less enjoyable. On a more positive note, the cover art for this book is gorgeous - it will turn heads and capture readers.

Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

As someone who can’t help but count the pages in a chapter to see how far I have to read, I love a book full of short stories. I quickly fell in love with Swamy’s writing style. Each story seemed to connect in theme, but they were written so uniquely and beautifully it was sometimes hard to believe the same person wrote them. This collection of stories covered many important and relatable topics; loss, love, identity, relationships, and home. The author did a great job at so elegantly taking big moments and wrapping them in a bow into just a sentence or two (i.e. pregnancy and parenthood, loss and grief). I really liked this book!

These are some of the best stories I've read in a very long time. They are connected by unifying themes--the body, home and belonging, parenthood, being an artist--but range so widely in voice and perspective that I often found myself marveling that they were written by the same person. A short story is a genre unto itself, not simply a truncated novel, and anyone who understands this will easily recognize Swamy's mastery of the form: her ability to traverse long periods of time in a few stunning sketches, to transition the reader into a new physical or temporal place with a single well-placed sentence. As a mother, I also reveled in the truth and beauty of Swamy’s descriptions of parenthood. On pregnancy: “We wore each other like a kind of weather, the child and me, my moods, I imagined, passing over her like wind or rain, and her movements, wild inside me some early mornings or times when i was still, like an electrical storm.” A father who perhaps sees too much of himself in his precocious young daughter observes: “It was a great pleasure to watch her move. She gathered her hands into fists and marched, full of destination.” The pleasure of reading these stories is similar. They are so surefooted and pure you are compelled to follow them, even if you don’t quite know where they are going.

A fantastic collection, just a stunning debut. Shruti Swamy deals so beautifully with characters who are navigating lives often touched by loss, whether it be of a brother or child, a wife, a sister, or just the loss of a time before they were locked into an oppressiveness, a situation they never imagined. The loss of a time when their lives seemed boundless. Sometimes the grief seems unbearable, as related by one character after losing her son: "I died for a long time. But I opened my eyes and found that I was still living." And so we all must find a way to continue even when it seems impossible, and this collection deftly illustrates those attempts, sometimes in strange ways, such as in the wonderful story, "The Laughter Artist." Moving across locations from India, to San Francisco, Germany, and beyond, this collection captures characters in their realist moments as they work through lives that have shifted and altered. While many of the stories do deal with forms of grief or loss, longing, other stories provide beautiful visions of love blooming and building, such as in "Wedding Season," offering elegant moments of tenderness. The range of emotion and feeling in this collection display a fine talent. Never a dull moment, this collection gallops along, taking the reader on an unforgettable ride.

I had a really hard time staying engaged with this collection of short stories. I found myself just skimming through after the first couple of stories. Maybe it's me and I just don't understand this style of writing, I just found the stories confusing with no obvious plots. I didn't understand what was going on half the time and there were all these sexual scenarios thrown in for no reason that I could see. I'm no prude but they just didn't seem to lend to the stories much. The stories themselves seemed to just jump around all over the place and sometimes in different voices and I had no idea what was going on or whose perspective I was reading from. They had no clear beginning, middle, or end. It felt like walking into the middle of a conversation, not really knowing much, but then having it abruptly end, but you don't care because you had no idea what was going on anyways. I'm sure there are people out there that will absolutely love this book, but it was not for me.
Thank you to Algonquin Books and Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

Shruti Swamy's lyrical prose is gorgeous, but like many short story collections, I felt that the author's writing style did not suit her stories equally--some were compelling and rich and wonderful; others were confusingly abstract and difficult to follow.

Standout stories (to me) were "My Brother at the Station," "The Siege," "Earthly Pleasures," and "Night Garden."

Sadly i didn't really get into a lot of these stories. Just wasn't for me. Lost my interest or couldn't keep it.

A woman tends to her daughter and waits for fire to reach the house. Another woman watches a dog and a cobra face off. Yet another woman searches for Krishna, here is in the guise of an actor. A collection of beautiful stories concerning relationships, the heart, and how we live each day.

There are some tough themes in this collection and an overall sense of pain and hopelessness. I found it hard to get into these stories although the imagery and sense of place are strong.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.
“Sudha took her husband’s hand. It was thin and dry and warm. She had memorized the lines in his palm, cut deep as though in wood. She listened to the sound of his breathing. Once she had lain on top of him, very still, and kept her face close to his so that she could taste the air that came from his mouth, tinged with clove from the kernels he sucked for better digestion.”
This prose is lyrical and captivating. Look forward to reading further.

A lovely collection of short stories. I am not usually a short story person, I like my stories longer. However I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this book. The stories were confusing at times and sometimes hard to get into but it was a nice read.

This novel consists of several short stories. As I find with most short story collections, some were more intriguing than others. However, in general I found that this book was just 'not for me'. Most of the stories I just did not understand. Throw in some explicit and unnecessary sexual encounters.... BAM you have a thought provoking, emotional story.... nope sorry, your magic did not work for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Algonquin Books for the opportunity to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

It is a hard thing to write a review of a book that was not a fit for you but you feel deserves merit. People talk about a book being either character or plot driven. In the case of A House Is A Body I can’t describe it as either. My impression was of streaming poetically written pictures that will perhaps appeal to lovers of poetry. My expectation and desire to read these stories was based on a desire to escape into a different culture given the ethnicity of the author. That expectation was not rewarded in this case but the author’s skill with language should not be dismissed.

This book was a series of short stories taking place in India. Possibly don’t understand Indian literature but I found the stories tedious to read.

Lovely collection of short stories but not sure it’s the type of thing our readership picks up. We don’t excel with short story collections.