Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep

 Tell me a story... about the fine line between the living and the dead

Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep: Ghost Stories by Adam Soto

A one-armed Harlem Hellfighter goes in search of his specially altered military uniform while Influenza ravages Philadelphia. A man is bound to the bedside of his comatose girlfriend who haunts his mother’s dreams. A couple travels to Wyoming to visit a childhood friend who killed her abusive husband. A pair of Syrian sisters, refugees of the civil war, find themselves at a crossroads in the home of their European hosts while their dead father whispers to them words of comfort and guidance. This collection of short stories explores the quiet spaces where the living and the dead haunt one another through their choices, dreams, and institutions. 

I hate giving bad reviews and would usually prefer to just not post any review than post a negative one. But as this is an advanced readers copy, I have to post something. 

I’m not sure if the formatting on this copy was just weird, but I found the first few stories really hard to follow. I probably would have chosen to start the collection with a different story in order to avoid this confusion. 

What disappointed me about this book is that a lot of the stories had really great ideas and occasionally even good execution at the start, but ended too abruptly or disjointedly to be satisfying. There isn’t one story that I loved from start to finish, although there were a few that I thought started out really well. 

Overall, I think this was just not the collection for me. There are people who will enjoy it. I just don’t know that I can recommend it. 

Favorite stories (these came so close!):

Sleepy Things

Immanuel

Ransoms

Rating: 1.5/5 stars

Content warning: infanticide (mentioned), rape (mentioned), war in Syria, suicide, pandemic, WWI (mentioned), wildfires, animal abuse, civil war, loss of a limb, domestic abuse (mentioned), sexual assault (mentioned), murder, immigrant child detention centers (mentioned)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.