Industry Reviews
"Cain [is] a fascinating and unique young writer."--Askmen.com "Cain has that rare and glorious knack of the perfect last line--one after another, her drily funny, mysterious, and beautiful stories end with a knife straight to the heart."--Sarah McCarry "Cain's remarkable ability to render thoughts and observations simply and precisely carries the reader. Each scene accrues a rising sense of tension as it continues, without any sort of narrative twist or jut, and no reliance on internet memes or name brands for content. There's not a sense of obsession with the self as much as there is a sense of the self unharbored, left living in a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch."--Blake Butler "Cain takes a lot of risks in her book by redefining plot and creating so many narrators who are unknowable and generally unfamiliar. But the risks pay off in sheer beauty, and, in CREATURE, she has created a beautiful monster indeed."--The Collagist "Amina Cain's stories are quiet. Her characters--can I call them creatures?--live in a suspended, in-between space, hovering on the edge of self-realization."--Full Stop "Cain's characters seem to live accidentally, stumbling into or out of vaguely defined situations--a cut on a hand, a stay at a monastery, a visit to a what? a ranch? a corral? The haphazardness of the narratives, the hesitance of the narrator, and the refusal to do more with the material offered, coalesce into a finely composed absence, a vast negative space around a spare, almost negligible frame . . . [Cain's] unsentimental writing also exposes a world of sentiment, so that [her] play with form opens into a depth of emotional engagement."--Word Riot "[Cain's] stories are mysterious, full of curiosity, very dark and then suddenly extremely funny."--HTMLGiant "To know what it is to know is possibly the hardest thing to achieve on the page; for a book to move from language to cognizance to real life body and soul skin and bones. CREATURE, Amina Cain's second collection of short stories, is a book that bears such magic, and I can say that I can feel it in my skin and bones. Amina's stories are quiet and vibrant, each revealing the hidden trauma of its characters or narrators so casually, it magnifies the terror. There is always something underneath the surface in her prose, that softly explodes in its own intimate magnitude, her sentences pitch-perfect crescendos."--Fanzine "[Cain's characters] are like people who have narrowly escaped disaster. Shell-shocked and clothed in tatters, they slip away to a quiet place--not to escape the feeling of having survived something extraordinary but to nurture it."--Los Angeles Times "Cain captures a particular kind of attempt at happiness: trying to be easy on oneself; praying at a Zen monastery; focusing on small pleasures like orchids and neatly folded towels. Perhaps that's why, in both form and content, so much here is microscopic, with a delicate sadness infusing mundane activities like bathing, spilling olive oil, and touching a wall...Cain's tone--unknowing, exhibiting the most awed reverence toward the smallest details of life and thought--remains wonderfully effective throughout."--Publishers Weekly "Amina Cain's stories are quiet. Her characters can I call them creatures? live in a suspended, in-between space, hovering on the edge of self-realization." Full Stop" "[Cain's characters] are like people who have narrowly escaped disaster. Shell-shocked and clothed in tatters, they slip away to a quiet place not to escape the feeling of having survived something extraordinary but to nurture it." Los Angeles Times"
