Mammals, I Think We Are Called

by Giselle Leeb

Longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2023

Ambitious and playful, darkly humorous and imaginative, these strikingly original stories move effortlessly between the realistic and the fantastical, as their outsider characters explore what it’s like to be human in the twenty-first century. Whether about our relationship with the environment and animals, technology, social media, loneliness, or the enormity of time, they reflect the complexities of being alive. Beautifully written and compelling, you won’t read anything else like them.

A weatherman reporting on looming environmental disaster finds the courage to come out.

A writing retreat deteriorates into a confused reality when a sinister writing tutor goes to war with a hare.

A cyborg visits a reconstructed campsite and experiences strong emotions from his distant human past.

Hopper’s Nighthawks is brought to life when a freak lightning ball in a diner propels a group of outsiders to decide between loneliness and love.

A man’s rage builds when an AI, brought into his house to cure him of his pathological projection, prefers talking to his kitten.

Doctors battle a psychological disease brought on by taking selfies, using a radical therapy that shatters identity in order to reshape it.

A visit by a mysterious coelacanth floods London with multicoloured dreams, suggesting new possibilities.

Genres: Short Stories

240 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2022

About the author

Giselle Leeb’s debut short story collection, Mammals, I Think We Are Called (Salt, 2022), was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her short stories have been widely published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Best British Short Stories 2017 (Salt), Ambit, Mslexia, The Lonely Crowd, Litro, Black Static, IZ Digital (Interzone), and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She has been placed and shortlisted in competitions including the Ambit, Bridport and Mslexia prizes. She is an assistant editor at Reckoning Journal and a Word Factory Apprentice Award winner 2019. She grew up in South Africa and lives in Nottingham.

Reviews

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 1 out of 5]

My guess is that the positive reviews were all written by friends of the author. I'm sorry for sounding harsch -which I try to avoid by all means- but it was that bad.

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been waiting for a collection of Giselle Leeb's short stories for a few years, and it's just as wonderful as I'd hoped! With wry dark humour and a boundless and inventive imagination, Leeb makes us look at the familiar with fresh eyes, taking us out of our everyday realities to explore everything that makes us human or non-human. From the weatherman in the opening story onwards, you won't want to put this book down, but you will make yourself because you don't want it to end. Everything that makes a great short story is here.

[Rupert · Rating 5 out of 5]

These eighteen short stories are fantastically imaginative and cover a wide range of themes including identity, psychology, and the environment. There is humour and darkness, joy and sorrow, realism and the Fantastick.

There's extreme weather, toy apes coming to life, hauntings, cyborgs, and even cryogenics. Wide-ranging in theme and style, they were a delight.

What a pleasure it was too read this collection from Salt Publishing and an extremely talented author.

[D.K. Mccutchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

MAMMALS I THINK WE ARE CALLED by Giselle Leeb
(SPOILER ALERT!)

Leeb’s short stories are dark with amazing flashes of color. The first short story “The Goldfinch is Fine,” had me so in the main characters head that I was certain I knew what was coming next –and I’ve never been so happy to be wrong! A fantastic ending to a difficult, prophetic tale.

“Mammals I think We are Called,” the title story, is a meta-story about writing stories about animals, reflective of Kafka’s metamorphosis for mammals.

The craftsmanship of Giselle Leeb’s short stories is astounding. The author can wring the reader’s emotions, but leave us wanting more. As I wound through these amazing tales, I found myself wondering if I could answer the question of what each story has in common? Perhaps a dark mood --with flashes of brightness, doom, long memories, reversals of understanding, and often surprising endings?

I found “Wolphina” among the most emotionally pleasing. Might say a lot about my need for revenge for the crime of climate change, but it also had a dark humor that made me laugh outloud. I was inspired to look up “Wholphin” as soon as I engaged with the story. I actually had to interrupt the story a bit later to drive my kid to work, which felt ironic, given the roll of driving in the story. I couldn’t wait to get back to see if I could determine if it was ultimately a story about a mercury poisoning hallucination or magical realism about highly intelligent delphinids growing legs. Then I realized, why not both?

[Michael DeLuca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love and admire Giselle Leeb's prose. These stories are startlingly weird, blackly hilarious, raw and dreamlike. The common thread I think is a breathtakingly of-this-moment sense of alienation--from the natural world, from each other, from a sense of what's true and what's deception. But there's always a shred of hope somewhere in among the disaffection and pain, and that's what pulls me through the moments of horror. Full disclosure, I was the original publisher of one of these stories, "Wholphinia", and have for some time been a fan of this author's style. But I was surprised by the range and breadth of these stories, and in particular was amazed at the poise of "The Goldfinch is Fine", in which a weatherman gradually loses his mind over an irrational, then increasingly certain terror of rising seas, "Hooked", in which collective, hallucinatory dreams reunite an isolated city, and "Barleycorn", in which a mysterious plague of spontaneous hair growth coincides with a hunt for a serial killer. These are challenging stories that invite the reader to engage in unexpected depth.

[Michael Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this original and deeply involving collection of stories, imagining, as it does, a dystopian and apocalyptic future, which is nevertheless intriguing and strangely plausible. Characters and their environments appear in various startling guises, and the narrative style keeps the reader guessing and constantly provokes reflection. The tone is dark, but ultimately, in the final two stories, alleviated by hope. I have rarely come across such a singular voice in a writer, and the style is so accomplished that I couldn’t fail to invest in the characters and their outcomes, however strange or unexpected they might be. Highly recommended.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is packed with weird situations and unexplainable consequences, but largely through what-if scenarios that felt akin to writing exercises than harnessing genuine connections to reality through character development and story. So although I enjoyed the 'weirdness', there were times where I found it difficult to engage. The best stories here ("Wolphinia", "Grow Your Gorilla"), however, achieve that delicate balance, and I recommend the book because it's sufficiently odd that your mileage will vary.

[Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection which contains some of the most startlingly genre-bending stories I think I've ever read. My personal favourites are the matter-of-factly sci-fi 'Everybody Knows That Place' and the folk horror/ dark comedy/police procedural/ hopeful climate fiction closer 'Barleycorn'. What a way to end a collection!

[Roy Manterfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is right up my street, well, I was travelling, so it was right up a few other streets too. It’s a great assortment of diverse tales; fascinating, funny, feeling, frightening, fantastical and faceted (possibly the right word, but I’m going with the alliteration either way).
Really enjoyable, go and buy it!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. Effective weird stories - e.g. strange half-fish-with-legs creatures have evolved; the people in Hopper’s Night Hawks painting have thoughts about each other - intriguing enough to make you read the next one.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Anne Goodwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quirky stories on the boundary between ordinary life and nightmare. Really enjoyed "The Goldfish Is Fine" and "A, and I". Some were a bit too esoteric for my taste.