Review: The World Outside by Elad Haber

The World Outside is Elad Haber’s debut collection of twenty-one short stories. There is a wide variety to this collection including fairy tale retellings, post-apocalyptic science fiction, and stories about grief. It’s hard to find one overarching theme that binds the stories together, but if I were pressed to pick one, it would be the human experience. Even with such different subject matter, at the heart of each story are people living, hating, surviving. I’m not going to review each of the twenty-one stories, but I’ll talk about the ones that stayed with me the longest.

Ophelia and the Beast: Haber opens his collection with a mashup of Hamlet and Beauty and the Beast. Ever since reading Hamlet in high school English, I have been interested in Ophelia and her dismal fate. Haber’s Beast rescues her from death and gives her new life in this short piece.

It Only Rains at Night: One of the post-apocalyptic tales that dominate so much of the collection. In this one a young girl is trapped inside a house that meets her every need. At first, she does not question this care, but eventually she longs for human contact and starts to explore. This story kept me curious from beginning to the end.

Bee Mine: What interested me about this one is the world building. After a pandemic that led to the banning of pets, people began building robotic companions. As a pet owner, I would be miserable without my furry little creatures, so I appreciated this concept.

But My Heart Keeps Watching and Halfway Down the Hole: Both of these stories are about grief and loss. I put them together because they are back to back in the collection and were a double whammy on my heart. The first story is about a young girl who rebuilds her father out of bones after his death. The story is sad and a bit amusing until the ending line which brought tears to my eyes. Haber is almost cruel to follow it up with Halfway Down the Hole about a family with a ghost in their car. The ghost is not a cruel one, but a lost family member. As anyone who has lost a close family member can attest, their presence is never fully gone. Haber captures the sweet agony of grief in this pair of stories.

Life in a Glass House: Not all the stories are bleak post-apocalyptic ones or full of grief. Life in a Glasshouse is more of an adventure story with an exciting female protagonist facing down danger.

I’m really just scratching the surface with this review. Each of the twenty-one stories is a window to another world. Even if you feel one isn’t quite working for you, there is so much life and variety in here that you can easily move onto the next and find something there. The majority of the stories are well-told with intriguing world-building. The couple that didn’t work for me were more a matter of personal taste. I recommend checking out these stories if you like unusual, slipstream stories about worlds that may be distant, but full of people that feel like they are right next door.

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