Minireview: "Minty Bags a Squidboy" by Michael Hulme

Samantha Henderson recommended "Minty Bags a Squidboy," by Michael Hulme. I loved this one, tremendously. Here's a section of it that really hooked me.

The squid people--squid heads, tentacles, human from the waist down--live in the poor places, by the station, by the sea, in high-rise ramshackle wooden buildings which tilt out towards the sea as if leaning blindly to the light. On quiet nights, they say, you can hear the wood creak and groan under the weight of all the many, many squid people. The squid people sing their songs to the sea, songs in slow, mournful, painful bellows. The sea doesn't want them, and the city doesn't want them either.

This one excels at mood. I felt tremendous sadness, and a little disgust, reading this story of Minty and Kevin, her squidboyfriend. Their relationship is so uneven, so human, so awful, and just... beautifully written, by my book. Wonderful touches, here and there, not too heavy on the worldbuilding, leaving just enough unsaid, but providing just the right bits to drive home the mood.

One odd thing that it does is drift back and forth between Minty and Kevin's points of view, and normally, I don't find that works in a short story of this length, but the story contrasts the way Kevin feels and the way Minty feels through these pov shifts. We get Minty's disgust for her boyfriend that she's using, and we get a kind of wistful almost-love from Kevin.

In the end, I feel sorry for all the characters, and I don't think there's any hope for any of them. A downer of a story, I guess, but I just loved the images and the people.

Recommend me more like this one please.