Thank you to NetGally and Unnamed Press for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

"The Coiled Serpent" is a collection of grotesque, body horror short stories that give a certain kind of texture to the idea of Britishness. The highlight story is "Ivor" which, for me, was the only cohesive and well-written story. The short story is inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's "Downhill" and is set at a boarding school for boys where the students are lifelong boarders. As I said, I think this was the only cohesive and well-written story in the bunch. The others all felt very shallow and the writing, while descriptive, seemed to be done more for the shock value of the imagery rather than for the narrative. Like, the gross factor does nothing for the storytelling in the stories other than to gross the reader out. I just felt it wasn't needed to get the points across. If anything, whatever messaging or ideas that were presented in the stories get lost in the gruesome details.

On the plus side, this encouraged me to deep clean my new kitchen and bathroom (with the help of my partner).

Overall, would not recommend.

The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova is such a strong collection of short stories - weird and wonderful, very creative but really real at the same time.

Reading this book felt almost like peering through a grimy window, and being met with a scene from a different world all together on the other side of the glass. The Coiled Serpent is not a book for the faint of heart but it is the book for people looking for something strange, unsettling, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright gross.

DNF at 28%, so I won’t rate this one.

There’s a weirdness to this collection that does appeal to me. There’s also a gross out factor that reminds me of Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. But in the stories I read, it didn’t really amount to much. In that sense it reminded me of Kelly Link, which is a selling point for fans of her, of course! But I find Link has a similar weirdness without point in her writing, and I lose interest.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I’m an idiot and requested this forgetting I’d read and reviewed it last time it was on NetGalley! This is what I said:
Grudova’s short stories are only occasionally set in our world, and lean more heavily on vibes than solid plot, meaning that they make very little sense at times but I did enjoy the dark grossness of a lot of them even if I didn’t love them.

3,25 stars.
First of all, please read the descriptions and reviews before picking up this book. The mentioning of bodily secretions, and the use of the body for delivering the themes in this book may not be for everyone.
The Coiled Serpent is bold and different. This is a collection of bizarre and gruesome, maybe event grotesque short stories.
The level of imaginativeness and how the stories served as subtle or overt critique of societal problems, hence the black humour were my favourite.
Some of the stories are more developed than others. Overall, I enjoyed the surreal, bodily horror and drama.
The author is very talented and I hope she writes more in these genres and about these themes.

It took me a while to get into this book but ultimately, this one wasn’t for me. I was expecting a different type of horror and while I felt a little unsatisfied, I did enjoy a few stories. The ones that stood out to me were The Poison Garden, The Surrogates, and Hoo Hoo. The body horror took me out of it while reading and I was never truly invested in any of the stories. I would recommend this book but only to very specific people.