Bloody Summer

• Author: Carmen Maria Machado
• Genre: Horror
• Publication Date: February 24, 2022
• Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
• Series: Trespass Collection #6

What do children know that adults can’t begin to believe? The answer is hidden in plain sight in this haunting short story by the bestselling author of Her Body and Other Parties. Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history—centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. A researcher arrives to write yet another academic paper about the well-studied town, called “Big Cats in the Children’s Hand-Games of Never-Again, Pennsylvania.” Nobody expects to find new clues—but, years after a scene of unimaginable violence, the truth about this childish chant is about to come out. Carmen Maria Machado’s Bloody Summer is part of Trespass , a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.

I always find myself reading short stories, even though I am not the biggest fan of them. Why? Because Amazon puts out these collections, and some of them turn out to be really great. And it gives me the opportunity to read work by some new authors that I’ve been wanting to check out without having to commit to a full book. One of those authors is Carmen Maria Machado—her books keep popping up on my TBR list, but I just haven’t gotten around to reading any yet. Until now.

This weird, creepy, and haunting short story focuses on the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, where a researcher arrives to study the hand-clapping games that the children played there and how they relate to the shocking events of a violent summer in which nearly all the residents were massacred by a bunch of tigers. The whole thing is written like a research paper and case study, complete with interviews of subjects, and there’s some heavy themes that come out yet they manage not to weigh the story down somehow. 

I actually found this one to be fascinating. Machado’s writing is immersive and flows smoothly, making this a breeze to read. My only complaint is that this one wasn’t long enough for me—I could see this in a longer format, maybe a novella. But overall, this was a good introduction to what to expect from Machado’s writing, and I’ll definitely be reading one of her books sooner rather than later.