Review: 'The Sea Gives Up the Dead: Stories' by Molly Olguín

I love short stories generally, but the collections that really grab my attention are those that blend the real with the fantastical, the painful with the hopeful, and the joy of living with the grief of it all. I didn't know what to expect going into The Sea Gives Up the Dead, but Molly Olguín had my full attention by the end of the first page. Thanks to Red Hen Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 29/04/2025
Publisher: Red Hen Press

The Sea Gives Up the Dead is a collection of stories sprinkled into the soil of fairy tale, left to take root and grow wild there.

A lovesick nanny slays a dragon. The devil tries to save her mother. A girl drowns and becomes a saint. Three kids plot to blow up their dad, a grieving mother sails the sea to find her son’s grave, a scientist brings a voice to life, and a mermaid falls into the power of a witch. Here, historical fiction, horror, and fantasy tangle together in a queer garden of love, grief, and longing.

One of the things Olguín achieves in this collection which astounded me was that, while each story was its own, coherent thing, all the stories together somehow created a cohesive whole. It's not as if characters from one story populate another, or that locations are revisited, or even that the same message is repeated over and over, rather there is something seamless to how Olguín moves from one story to the other. All together, they create a world that is technically human and yet holds marvels around every corner. This could be love, unexpectedly, but also a dragon. You could lose your loved ones because of a war or to a apocalyptic flood, have them returned to you as a corpse or still breathing. All throughout, Olguín infuses her world with elements from fairy tales and magical realism, but it also feels, to me at least, deeply grounded in the melting pot that America actually is. The stories in The Sea Gives Up the Dead all, in their own way, deal with the question of finding a sense of family and connection in a very hectic world and Olguín finds these moments by looking at everyone and giving them a place in her world.

Collections can be a mixed bag because there will almost always be at least one story that doesn't entirely hit. With The Sea Gives Up the Dead, however, every single story gave me something to connect to, something to think about, some imagery to dwell on for the next weeks. The collection contains twelve stories and although I can't discuss them all in detail here, they all are worth mentioning. The opener 'Seven Deaths' is a great attention-grabber, exploring death and family dynamics through an immigrant family. These themes echo throughout the entire collection. 'Devils Also Believe' is a heartbreaker of a story about, you guessed it, death and family dynamics, but also religion and friendship. 'The Princess Wants for Company' mixes fantasy with queer love, while commenting on class. 'The Undertaker's Dogs' is not for those who need to check Does the Dog Die before watching a film. 'Honey from the Rock' is very brief, two pages or so, but it has wormed its way into my head regardless. 'Clara Aguilera's Holy Lungs' is a stand-out for me, going from cataclysmic disaster to loss of a family member to discussions of sainthood, all with a lovely dose of body horror. 'My Husband and Me' is a "Dear Abby" kind of letter which honestly horrified me with its exploration of intimacy in a technological world. 'Small Monuments' is a story of queer love and revenge which had me both chortling and going "Oh no". 'Captain America's Missing Fingers' explores war, trauma, and family and is touching in its depiction of children's perspectives and experiences of these themes. 'Esther and The Voice' was one of my favourites, exploring what it means to be alive, memory, AI, and grief. 'The Sea Gives Up the Dead' sees a mother try to retrieve her son's body from France, only to be confronted with the reality of how she raised him. 'Foam on the Waves' is a beautiful retelling of 'The Little Mermaid' which nails the undersea aesthetic and the desire to be other than one is.

Molly Olguín won me over pretty much from page one. This was my first time reading anything by her but I am adding anything else she writes to my "read now please" list. All of the stories in this collection contain moments and lines that will make you do a double take and snort, but these are followed up by moments and lines that made me want to stare at the ceiling for a bit. The Sea Gives Up the Dead is a beautiful blend of a variety of genres. As mentioned above, the fantastical and the fairy tale get their turn, but so do elements of horror and suspense. Throughout it I felt that I did get a good sense of Olguín's voice, of the ideas she had in mind, the messages she wanted to convey. With the genre-switching as well as hopping between different moods, it consistently felt as if Olguín was in control of her craft and nothing felt out of place or unnecessary to me. I became so deeply attached to many of her characters, precisely because I also got the feeling that Olguín poured a lot of care and attention into crafting them into messy but real people. Some make horrible choices, others understandable ones, and behind it all is a true, genuine search for love and understanding. I can't wait to read more by Olguín!

I give this collection...

5 Universes!

I absolutely adored these stories by Olguín as they are the perfect blend between deeply insightful, fantastical, and utterly creepy! For those looking for a slightly different short story or a whole collection that is excellently crafted, The Sea Gives Up the Dead is it.