Such Small Hands

Item: Such Small Hands
Author: WhichBook

Andrés Barba

This powerful and disturbing novella is not an easy, light-hearted read. A ghost story with a difference, this is a philosophical exploration of childhood innocence and the delicate balance between being different and the desire to belong to the group. Its uncanniness is creepy, but it's gentle not graphic. Interweaving the voices of the group of girls with the desperate solo voice of Marina is a captivating way of telling this haunting story.

Extract

She took breaks from us, too; sometimes she managed to forget about us, and then woke and returned to where we played, pretending not to have been watching her. We felt a dark pleasure in our bodies, a mixture of strength and fatigue. We longed for the moment she'd return.
'But I want to be the doll, too.'
She knew that if she kept insisting she'd eventually get what she wanted, that the time would come when we could no longer stop her. She'd appear, transformed, new: her hands, her feet, her head, her body tense and slightly hunched over.

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