There was once a girl who could eat people’s sadness
away.
Cover art - Spring 2022 issue
Now this was a good story. What fun, the world building, the theatrics,
the idea of someone being able to physically ingest the
feeling of sadness. There was a fair bit of leaning into the magical realism
genre, which is really, honestly not my thing, but this story might well be the
exception to that particular rule. Because while it involved magic pretty
heavily, it also kept alive a human element to the story, a characterization
that kept me involved.
They would tell her their stories. And she would stoop
over their sadnesses, kiss them, cry with them, bundle them into her arms and
press them against her cheek.
Then she would eat them all.
The story goes that there is
once a girl who can eat sadness, and people come from far and wide to give her
their grief so she can take that burden from them. But all that changes when a
king comes and commands the girl to eat his sorrow. When she refuses, he
captures her and forces her to live in a tower in his kingdom, where she’s
treated as a novelty figure, paraded out for the service and entertainment of
the citizens, her powers put on display like some kind of paltry magic trick
for the masses. And the girl suffers through the debasement and the humiliation
until one day she can’t take it anymore, and she vomits all the sadness out.
The pool of vomit stared back at her. And it grew—as
if bidden to, by some strange kind of magic, into a Thing with several dripping
appendages and two sets of saucer like eyes.
The idea of a creature made
from vomit, even magical grief vomit, is pretty gruesome, but you have to admit
that the author’s imagination is really taking us on a wild journey here. I was
completely engrossed, even with all the weirdness and the twists and turns this
story was taking. We go from vomit monsters to magical trees to river and sky
spirits and on and on, and I enjoyed all of it very much, even when it stopped
making sense, even when it was clear that the author was just creating things
up out of nowhere. There’s no doubt that there were some parts that were
pretentious and overdone, and some that could have done better with a more
restrained writing style, but at the end of the day I was entertained, so I
give it full marks just for that.
I sit on a bench by the platform, and think about
things that are tyrannical, and things that are lovely, and things that are sad
and joyous or both.
I think the only flaw I could
identify in the writing was the sudden, jarring presence of the narrator shoved
into the tale itself, with the use of a first person point of view where a
third person story-teller would have sufficed. I genuinely think this story
would have been best served by having an invisible, omniscient narrator. The
usage of ‘I’ and ‘you’ ruined what was a perfectly good story, because all it
meant was that the reader would suddenly be addressed in sentences that should
have stayed purely expository. By using conversational phrases such as ‘by the
way’, there was a sudden shift from the formality of the storytelling to a
rather more informal, casual tone that ruined the elegance of the writing
itself.
The King’s bald head began to sweat beneath his
headdress, which was encrusted, by the way, in jewels the names of which no one
had ever heard, and layered over with gauze and silk and so many different
things that it appeared as misshapen a mass as his kingly highness.
There was also, of course, one random break right in the middle of the story where a sentence stopped in the middle and jumped to the next line for no apparent reason. You can’t even excuse it as artistic license or a creative decision taken because there was no actual reason for that break to occur. The only explanation is that someone is bad at editing, or someone is even worse at layouts. At this point, having read multiple other stories on this online platform for South Asian writing, I’ve come to embrace the fact that all these authors are being heavily shortchanged by editors and layout designers who clearly have some vendetta against every poor soul who has the misfortune to have their works published here. That can possible be the only justification for why these poor authors and their works are being treated in so cavalier a manner, and why random stops occur where they really shouldn't.
The girl curled up inside the Sadness Thing’s stomach, which was warm and gurgled gently. She tied its tongue tightly around her waist, pressed her head snug into the Sadness
Thing’s innerbelly.
The walls inside were lined with years of silk, and months of mourning. She
touched them gently. She kissed them goodnight.
Overall, this was good, fun
storytelling, even if a lot of it was vague. I really think this author could
do great things if given proper guidance. This is the
barebones of what you call a fun idea, and the possibility definitely exists
for more brilliance. This goes on the ‘Recommended’ list.
The Sadness Eater by Marium Taufeeq was published in Issue 002 (Spring 2022) of Tasavvur, an online portal for South Asian writing. The remaining reviews for other Tasavvur stories by Pakistani authors can be found here.