In G.G. Silverman’s debut fairytale-horror collection The Blood Year Daughter, a woman builds husbands out of gravel and slaughterhouse feathers, two sisters eat cinnamon-scented pieces of their mother, and a charming doctor’s murdered brides whisper warnings to his newest wife.
Silverman’s women and girls escape smiling captors, draw blood to curse their loved ones, and wield fear to defend themselves in post-apocalyptic worlds. They ignore the insults of rotting Elderwomen filled with flies, resist marriage proposals, and fill themselves—joyfully—with multitudes of snakes. They are murdered and choose to live again.
Drawing from folktales, Silverman’s Italian roots, and killers both real and imagined, The Blood Year Daughter’s stories recall Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado. Spare and glittering as a spiderweb, sharp as a needle through a husband’s nose, they establish G.G. Silverman as a formidable voice in feminist horror and magical realism.
