All the Acorns on the Forest Floor
Fiction
Turner
September 15, 2020
Advanced reader copy
288
Free from publisher
A couple brimming with the hope of a new pregnancy. A woman coming to terms with the truth behind her adoption. A husband trying to save his marriage from the despair of infertility. These are just a few of the stories in All the Acorns on the Forest Floor, a book about the lengths we go to for the love of our children, our spouses, our mothers, our daughters.
All the Acorns on the Forest Floor is a book of connections between people, connections lost and found, across time and space. There are stories of women who never became mothers (by choice or by fate), women who became mothers in unexpected or nontraditional ways, and women who gave up or lost babies. There are emotional aftershocks with each character's personal earthquake, aftershocks that shake their lives and force them to consider who they are, what they want, and how they love.
My review:
Here's what you need to know about me before reading this review. No matter how many times I try, I am not much of a fan of short stories. I've tried to pinpoint why, and the best I can come up with is that I always want more than each story can give me. There have been a few exceptions out there, and I would say that this is one of them. If a book of short stories is going to pull me in at all, it has to be one where there is an overlap of characters (to satisfy my I need to know more). This book does that really well. The characters may not show up in each story, but they are interspersed through the book to make you feel like you haven't lost touch with them. I must also talk about the lovely writing and overall themes. I think the synopsis does a great job of exploring the themes within better than I could, so I will encourage you to read that. This one will definitely play on your emotions, there are sad, happy, and everything in between moments happening.
A concise, quiet book about love and connections, this was an enjoyable short story book. And I don't usually put enjoyable and short stories in the same sentence, so it's a definite for those who are short story lovers.
