A collection of wonderfully written short stories.
Each one feels like looking through a window into someone’s life.
The Woman from Atlantida was my favourite and was hauntingly beautiful.
I look forward to reading more by Samantha Schweblin.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Good and Evil and Other Stories. Strange and sad would be the two words I think sum up this collection of short stories. It’s slim with fewer than 10 stories, and I’m not quite sure it felt impactful enough to hold its own. I did like most of the stories but they didn’t wow me.

It started off quite strong with a woman struggling to readjust to every day life after a failed suicide attempt. This one definitely sets the tone for the collection - melancholic. But then the second story, featuring a dead boy and an injured horse, just left me scratching my head.

An Eye in the Throat brought us back to the good stuff, where a child swallows a battery and the family subsequently endures more than their fair share of tragedy. Although I don’t have kids, the battery part of this really struck fear in me. This is something Schweblin does well throughout the collection - provokes unease through the everyday and mundane. But there was an opacity to some of the stories that left me wondering if I’d understood.

I had a similar experience with a Mouthful of Birds, but I think I will still read Seven Empty Houses to complete the trifecta of Schewblin short story collections.

Good and Evil and Other Stories is an amazing, thought-provoking collection. Samantha Schweblin is an absolutely brilliant storyteller, unafraid to take risks and tackle dark, complex themes while weaving in elements of magical realism. Each story carries a sense of guilt and moral ambiguity, with a touch of existential dread.

I loved every single story, but Eye in the Throat blew me away - what an absolutely brilliant piece of writing.

Samanta Schweblin has long established herself as one of the most unsettling and innovative voices in contemporary fiction, and in Good and Evil and Other Stories, she delivers another masterclass in the short story form. This new collection is a razor-edged, surreal meditation on the human condition—stripped down, raw, and humming with quiet menace.

Each story in this collection feels like stepping into a dream that’s a few degrees off reality. There’s nothing overtly fantastical here—no overt monsters, no apocalyptic scenery—but the true horror emerges from Schweblin’s ability to make the ordinary grotesque, the familiar uncanny, and the domestic terrifying. The result is a series of elegant, tightly wound traps, each ready to snap with emotional force.

The collection opens with a gut-punch: a mother emerges from the lake behind her home, having witnessed something both horrific and magnetic. From that moment, Schweblin makes it clear—these stories are not about clear resolutions or easy explanations. They’re about discomfort, ambiguity, and the violence we hide in our most intimate relationships.

Highlights include:
• A young father plagued by guilt and the irreversible damage caused by a single distracted moment—a story that distills parenthood, vulnerability, and the impossibility of undoing the past into a few haunting pages.
• A surreal horse incident, in which tragedy and absurdity coexist so seamlessly, you’re unsure whether to cry or laugh.
• A tale of two writers that begins with poisoning and spirals into metafictional commentary on collaboration, ego, and the destructive hunger for artistic recognition.
• A woman’s misguided act of kindness, rewarded not with gratitude but with a chilling invasion—perhaps the most overtly sinister tale in the collection.

But Schweblin doesn’t deal in simple binaries. The title, Good and Evil, is more interrogation than declaration. These stories blur moral lines, exploring how easily guilt, grief, and longing can twist into cruelty—or how even our worst instincts can come from a place of love.

Stylistically, Schweblin is unmatched. Her prose (in Megan McDowell’s deft translation) is sparse but charged, often delivered in short, clipped sentences that leave wide emotional gaps for the reader to fall into. Every line feels intentional, every silence just as loud as the words on the page.

This is not an easy collection—it asks a lot of its readers. It offers no tidy conclusions, no moral lessons. But what it gives in return is far more powerful: a mirror held up to our darker impulses, and a challenge to find clarity in chaos.

Fantastic short story collection - all hits, no skips! All six stories were great, and a few of them I'll be thinking about for a long time.

This is exactly the kind of collection I love, unsettling literary stories with elements of horror and surrealism. In each story I immediately got a strong sense of character and place and was absolutely hooked throughout. My favourite story was The Woman from Atlántida, due to time constraints I didn't read it in one sitting and whenever I had to put it down I was desperate to pick it back it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I'd thoroughly recommend this, especially for fans of Salt Slow, Her Body and Other Parties, and Cursed Bunny.

I read (and enjoyed) Samanta Schweblin’s novel ‘Fever Dream’ a few years back so was pleased to be granted access to her latest collection of short stories, a literary category in which she is recognised as a leading practitioner; it’s safe to say this latest offering lives up to expectations.

There are only six stories in this collection and overall I found them stylistically quite coherent, a successive (and successful) blend of the mundane and the outlandish as characters navigate some unusual scenarios alongside the more general vicissitudes of life. (It’s no spoiler to admit that mortality, and a sense of loss figure prominently). Schweblin weaves a world in which grief abides and absence is - apologies for the pun - very much present, and as readers we are acutely aware of the passage of time as characters reflect on ageing, survival and that ultimate great leveller, the inescapability of death.

I think my favourite aspect of her writing overall is the manner in which she conjures up familiar worlds where some aspect is peculiarly off-kilter, and we are never precisely sure if we have missed (or not been made aware of) some critical piece of information that would illuminate the wider situation, or if instead the events being described are simply odd, uncanny and/or fantastical. The obvious touchstone for me might be the late film director David Lynch; the key ingredients and components in front of us are both recognisable and somewhat unremarkable but they are presented to us in such a way that leaves us feeling broadly unbalanced and questioning our comprehension skills and judgement. Which, in my particular case, is a literary sensation that I very much enjoyed overall!

(The other author that crossed my mind whilst reading Good and Evil and Other Stories is Mariana Enriquez - this is probably largely because she too is Argentinian and I also happened to read ‘Our Share of Night' very recently. That novel is certainly less rooted in the mundane or ordinary but even whilst acknowledging the extent of the mystical and gothically supernatural elements of that narrative, I have to concede that the backdrops and milieus still had the tang and taste of places where regular, quotidian lives were being lived fairly typically, albeit with some extraordinary occurrences and people in the midst of them all. Anyway, I digress.)

Overall, I found this a strong collection, some stories within which are likely to remain with me for some time.

With thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

I’ve never read any Schweblin before but I definitely will be looking out for her work in future. This short story collection was hugely unsettling without being actively dystopian or fantastical, making the everyday even more creepy by not being overly weird.

I love, love, love Samantha Schweblin. This was another great book by her, although not really a favorite for me (I prefer her full books instead of stories), it's still always a pleasure to read her. Highly recommend!

Haunting, gripping, daunting everyday horror in every story, these short pieces are unmissable and unputdownable. Exploring issues that make you uneasy and highlighting feelings and actions that are difficult to swallow, you'll enjoy each story as a whole and even more as part of this classy collection.

Truly strange and masterfully tragic, they will haunt you well after you finish reading.

I'm not normally a lover of short stories as I feel like I get hooked into the story only for it to end abruptly. However, this collection was such a strange and gripping section of stories that I was enthralled. Quite an eerie collection and nothing like I've read before so I'm very keen to read more.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks so much for the ARC.

I’ve read most of Samanta Schweblin’s works - if you like her others, you’ll love this one. It’s a collection of six short stories, all in her trademark ‘unsettling everyday life gets weird and creepy’ genre. I don’t always love short stories - and honestly each of these left me a bit frustrated and wanting more of a definitive ending. But I think that’s a me problem. They definitely all left me thinking, and feeling like there was an overarching meaning I had failed to grip and that I wasn’t quite sure what I had just read. Maybe that’s the point. And that’s also how I’ve always felt at the end of her novels too.

The collection is immensely readable and I tore through it in a day - would definitely recommend to others.

The horror in Good and Evil and Other Stories is a kind of unease that lurks in your belly and you can't quite figure out why but you know something isn't right. In some of the stories, Schweblin does reveal the reason but in others leaves the reader to imagine for themselves what it is that's not right. What sets Schweblin apart from other writers of this genre is that there is often a theme of human kindness to her stories which seems to outshine the horror.

The stories are of varying lengths but easily read through in a single sitting. As with any short story collection, there were stories I liked more than others. The opening story, Welcome to the Club, was my least favourite. It felt like an odd choice for the first story as the narrator felt unreliable and seemed to be in some sort of trance-like state which made it hard to follow and engage. Luckily, I persevered and enjoyed all the other stories with my personal favourite being The Woman from Atlántida.

"Good and Evil and Other Stories" is an impressive collection of short stories. Having not read this author before, I wasn't sure what to expect but I was gripped throughout. The stories are dark and explore some pretty difficult themes around love, relationships, illness, death, grief, depression, alcoholism and others. But don't let this put you off as they are dealt with very well.

I can sometimes find short stories a bit hit and miss and not always consistent in their quality but these were all good. And while I enjoyed some more than others, I could appreciate all of them. The only thing I wanted was for there to be a bit more closure for some of the stories but that's a personal preference. I will definitely be seeking out more of the author's work.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

There is no doubt that the stories here are quite beautifully written, as well as evocative, haunting, uncanny, and literary. I just struggled to get into most of them, and felt kind of dumb at the end having read them and not understood them.

William in the Window was probably my favourite, with An Eye in the Throat a close second - both were the most uncanny and most unsettling, which I enjoyed. A Fabulous Animal was also affecting - incredibly sad and weird.

The other three were commendable pieces of writing for sure - helped by a delicate and thoughtful translation - but I’m just not smart enough a reader for them to have really worked for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the review copy.

As a Samanta Schweblin superfan, I couldn't wait for this collection and it didn't disappoint. Each story is like a little gem - perfectly paced, expertly crafted. Her way with words is so unique, and I will read absolutely anything she writes.

ha, what a fantabulous good read. and i mean how do you be such an author that you manage to get such tight stories within all of these titles!? wow. i felt a whole lot whilst reading these stories. they were all so different but somehow and brilliantly they carried the same writing that Samantha brought to each story. i had her character, her flow, her style and thats only a good thing.
the books were strange but not. they made me feel weird but didn't. they make sense and no sense at all. i felt hopeful and distressed. i feel sad but not. it was just so good! you get totally involved in the story and dont even know if you can pin point why. and they make you think. and before long they are finished and you are turning pages quickly for the next all the while still feeling tense from the last one.
i was left thinking long after each but still wanted to quickly read the next. so at time i was in a bit of a tizz lol. and most of the time what i felt i couldn't quite decipher and so just ended up knowing Samantha is brilliant and way too clever for me.
some of the titles like welcome to the community needed me to really stop as i enjoyed that ones. and a few others i think i could go back to and see something totally new. and im not one for going back and reading again often so that tells you something.
also the Eye in the Throat was just sad. but compelling and brilliant too. that story left me to pause for a while.
there is an eerie edge to the writing and sometimes slightly uneasy it leave me feeling. but all the time im simply moving myself to read more.
a great read this book. one of my faves to date of short stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and Publishers for this ARC

This has Schweblin written all over it.

A wonderful collection of fascinating and disturbing short stories, that holds underlying tension.

I felt that this was incredibly similar to Mouthful of Birds. Although they both share similar territory, this novel contains strange situations and behaviour. The epigraph "Strange is Always Truer" works for both titles if not a little closer to Mouthful of Birds.

A few annoyances with this novel is that there was quite a lot of unanswered questions, and I felt that some stories were missing elements that would of made the stories feel more cohesive.

Having loved Little Eyes, I was thrilled to receive an ARC of Good and Evil and Other Stories through NetGalley.

Schweblin is still a master of the uncanny, and this latest collection of stories only confirms that. Her short stories crawl under your skin in the best (and worst) possible way. “William in the Window” in particular evokes the eerie, psychological unease of Edgar Allan Poe. There’s a creeping dread in the everyday that Schweblin captures so effortlessly.

Her work here often reminded me of fellow Argentine writer Mariana Enriquez — both have a gift for exposing the horror that simmers just beneath the surface of daily life. In stories like “Welcome to the Club,” the message is clear: reality itself is the true horror.

The characters often feel lost, unmoored by grief, misfortune, or inexplicable events — like the father whose child swallows a battery.

These are haunting little gems — dark, precise, and unsettling. Highly recommended for fans of literary horror that blurs the line between the real and the surreal.

I should start by saying that as a reviewer, I feel like I'm not easy to impress and I am not given to hyperbole. Having said that this collection of short stories absolutely floored me. I was privileged enough to receive an ARC of this collection from Netgalley. I read a lot of short stories (it's something I'm doing intentionally with the goal to read the equivalent of one a day for the year) and this collection broke me.

There are only 6 stories in the collection and they're all unique and emotive in their own rights. There was more than one story here that brought me to the verge of tears. In Schweblin's world, the strange and the sad and the supernatural elbow each other for space.

The opening story, Welcome to the Club, is about a suicide attempt (a drowning) that is not completed. The female protagonist returns to her home in drenched clothing, reeking of the sea, only for her to reveal that she's married with a family and must continue with her day as if she hasn't just had a near brush with death. Of course, not everyone is oblivious to the life-shattering event she's narrowly avoided, and there's a price to be paid for it.

A Fabulous Animal starts with a call: Elena, a dying woman, wants to catch up with her old friend. A simple enough premise, but in Schweblin's hands this story is just one long turn of the knife into the reader's heart.

An Eye in the Throat is the story I found most affecting, showing us a father-son relationship that's never quite been the same since one fateful day, and a father whose landline still rings in the dead of night with troubling calls from a silent caller.

In The Woman From Atlantida, a hairdresser cuts an alcoholic's hair without fee or explanation and we gradually learn the truth about how they first met.

And A Visit From The Chief starts off innocently enough, with Lidia leaving her elderly mother's medical institute. On the subway home, she's asked for change by a woman she recognises as a runaway from the same medical unit. Like all of the stories in this collection, it was impossible to predict where this story would go next.

It feels unfair to single any story out here because they're all such fully-formed and unmissable pieces of short fiction. The characters and scenarios here will stay with you a long time after you put the book down.

Highly recommended for readers of horror and literary fiction and a strong contender for my book of the year.

‘’Madness scares you, it distracts you, but you have to look at it closely.’’

I have read Samanta Schweblin’s work extensively, and each time, I’m struck anew by the power of her writing. In just ten to twenty pages, she constructs riddles—quiet, contained, yet charged with emotional and psychological weight—that can spark hours of discussion. She transforms the mundane into the disturbing, turning everyday encounters into moments of quiet terror. If Fernanda Melchor tests the limits of your sanity with supernatural dread bleeding into reality, Schweblin does the opposite: she takes familiar relationships and recognisable emotions and quietly corrupts them. She invites you to reconsider what it means to age, to belong, to parent, to survive in a world where madness spreads silently, like an infection you didn’t know you were carrying.

The new collection, Good and Evil and Other Stories, published in 2025, continues her exploration of psychological fragility with chilling precision. The stories are brief but relentless. They don’t rely on overt horror or shock—they work like whispers at the edge of your mind, asking unsettling questions in deceptively ordinary settings.

‘’Mommy, are you happy?’’

Welcome to the Club: The story opens with a woman’s failed suicide attempt. What becomes immediately clear is that she is deeply depressed—but why? What has driven her to make a decision that would leave her two daughters without a mother? And who is the strange neighbour, the Hunter, who seems to know everything about her?
A story that raises a million questions and deliberately leaves the answers to the reader.
A Fabulous Animal: Two old friends talk on the phone. One of them is always on the run. The other is dying. After so many years, the only thing that unites them is the death of a boy and a horse…

William in the Window: In a writer’s retreat, two women become friends, sharing their worries about the ones they have left at home. One is afraid her husband will die without her. The other is afraid for her cat and gives little thought to her husband. How do you accept that kind of distance when your own partner is dying of cancer? And what does it mean when a dead animal appears to be watching you?
A quiet tale about the companionship of marriage—or the absence of it—and the human need to cling to whatever anchor life offers

‘’But at night, if the phone rings and my father picks up, no one answers.’’

An Eye in the Throat: Narrated by a precociously bright two-year-old, this is the story of a single moment that leads to the collapse of a family. As is often the case in Schweblin’s fiction, every page holds layers of secrets, instincts, confessions, and quiet mysteries.
One of the saddest stories I’ve ever read—deeply memorable and quietly haunting. A poignant study of a fractured bond between father and son.


‘’And you two?’’, he asked. ‘’What do you do to keep from getting bored?’’
My sister said, ‘’We sneak into other people’s houses.’’

The Woman from Atlantida: The visit of a client takes the narrator back to a summer of her childhood when she and her sister encountered mysterious characters such as a woman poet who seems to be coming from a different time. The story of an unsettling summer, of sisterhood, loneliness and addictions, of the kindness of children, the isolation that comes with age, and the moments of disaster that always find us unaware.

A Visit from the Chief: Unfortunately, this story fell flat for me and made little sense. It follows a troubled 60-year-old woman who can’t seem to decide whether she loves her daughter or resents her, while her mother and another elderly woman engage in bizarre antics at a hospice. Add a repulsive male character to the mix, and you’re left with a disappointing, disjointed narrative.
A weak and confusing ending to an otherwise haunting and incisive collection.
Despite its uneven conclusion, Good and Evil and Other Stories confirms once again Samanta Schweblin’s mastery of the short story form. Her writing is precise, eerie, and emotionally complex—never offering easy answers, but always provoking thought. These stories linger long after the last page, unsettling in the best possible way. For readers drawn to quiet horror, psychological unease, and the emotional fissures of ordinary life, this collection is well worth reading.
‘’Why don’t you talk to me?’’, asked the woman. ‘’Why don’t you ask me things?’’
Many thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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