
Member Reviews

LETTERS FROM AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY by Theodora Goss
This is an intriguing collection of “what if?” stories, full of possibilities, inviting one to ponder and wonder long after reading. Some were familiar, having appeared elsewhere, and fun to see again. Some are brand new, written especially for this book, with parallels and lessons applicable to our real (or is it?) world.
I was most enthralled by the new renderings of familiar tales: the truth in Mina’s Diary, the important mission of the Lost Girls of Oz, Estella with a kind and loving Miss Havisham, Frankenstein’s very lovely daughter. I was also intrigued by revelations of new and alien worlds and visitors.
These are beautifully written, inviting rereading and meditation on truths revealed or merely hinted at. I’m glad to have them all in one place, easy to revisit.

From letters to academic articles to emails, Goss interweaves fantasy elements, Victorian literature, and autofiction into a unique collection of short stories. Can't say that they worked for me but at times I could see the vision.
A girl growing up in the US begins to suspect that a double of her remained in her birth country and they are growing up in parallel across oceans. A group of young academics dream up an imaginary country, only for them to be discredited when the country comes into existence and everyone insists it has always been around. A scientist seeks to identify an alien species that appears in the form of beautiful young men.
Cool, right? Conceptually I really enjoyed some of the premises of these stories and how they play with reality, fiction, and language. Many of the stories connect or callback to one another, and others are directly inspired by the author's life. As implied by the title, almost all have epistolary elements or are written in the form of academic articles. All of this I like in theory, but in practice I had a lot of trouble with the writing style and narrative structures. Most of the stories feel like they vaguely parallel the real world or a well-known piece of literature (in the story notes, Goss mentions how nearly every story plays off of existing ones) but there's not a sense of internal cohesion or payoff within the stories, either challenging the original work or building on it. I agree that "England Under the White Witch" mirrors real life oppressive regimes but there's not really any other point to the story.
The interconnectedness of the stories are cool in theory, but some of them are misleadingly not connected even though they seem to be ("The Mad Scientist's Daughter" and "Frankenstein's Daughter" both have characters who are supposed to be Frankenstein's daughter but the characters and stories are completely unrelated according to the story notes). There are also at least three different characters named Mary across multiple stories, possibly more, but also possibly less since some of them might be the same Mary which I think is unnecessarily confusing. The characters Dora and Dóra in one story are inspired by Theodora the author but are not her. The narrator in "To Budapest, With Love" seems to legitimately be the author, and Theodora Goss in the titular story is kind of the author but potentially in an alternate universe. All this is just very unclear and that in addition to the loose feeling of purpose within the stories independently made this very difficult to read for me.
If you already like Theodora Goss, you'll probably enjoy this collection, but at best I would say to new readers that this is probably not the best place to start with her writing.
Thank you to Theodora Goss and Tachyon Publications for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!