Book Review: A Creature Wanting Form

You ever read a book that truly makes you stop and examine the world around you? Luke O’Neil’s, A Creature Wanting Form, really did that for me. This was my first short-story anthology this year and it didn’t disappoint.

You could say the theme is apocalypse – both pre and post end of the world events. I’ll get this out of the way right up front: not every story in the book landed for me. The good news is there are more stories that did leave me emotionally gut-punched than not.

What can you expect? Climate change disasters, creeping fears about police, strange animal behavior, an inability to connect with others and the drifting out to sea lonesome feeling rotting out your gut. This book does a great job of describing what it’s like to exist as a grownup in 2024.

My biggest critique is that the stylized language/grammar can make the reading a challenge. O’Neil opts for long sentences with little in the way of punctuation. While this does give the impression of someone sitting next to you at the kitchen table telling you all their horror stories, it can make the act of reading the book a little cumbersome.

Despite that though, this is a book worth reading, especially if you find yourself looking around and asking, “Is anybody else seeing this shit?”