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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
Lonely & observational & unsettled & definitely something I’d come back to read again. My favorite story was Peking Duck!
“It doesn’t take much to convince yourself that you’re ok. Just some discretionary income & a regularity to your days.”
“It doesn’t take much to convince yourself that you’re ok. Just some discretionary income & a regularity to your days.”
3,5 ster, vermakelijk, gekke grappige verhalen, maar kon de helft al niet meer herinneren toen ik het uithad.. kan liggen aan short story format en mijn brainrot, maar sommige verhalen waren ook niet heel diepgaand. Wel hou ik van de surrealistische elementen in de verhalen, die bij boekenclub toch wel heel leuk bespreekbaar waren.
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Los Angeles - 4/5
Oranges - 4.5/5
G - 3/5
Yeti Lovemaking - 4/5
Returning - 2/5
Office Hours - 4.5/5
Peking Duck - 3.75/5
Tomorrow -2.5/5
Oranges - 4.5/5
G - 3/5
Yeti Lovemaking - 4/5
Returning - 2/5
Office Hours - 4.5/5
Peking Duck - 3.75/5
Tomorrow -2.5/5
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Breh, this is why I don’t read books.”
- my 19yo brother after hearing a snippet of the audiobook with no context lol
Reminded me of Miranda July’s short stories but with more mommy issues and pop culture references! (this is good; give me more content like this)
- my 19yo brother after hearing a snippet of the audiobook with no context lol
Reminded me of Miranda July’s short stories but with more mommy issues and pop culture references! (this is good; give me more content like this)
4-4.5
Pretty superb.
Felt like a mix of Leonora Carrington, Miranda July, Izumi Suzuki, Laura van den Berg and Bora Chung, at the same time remaining quite distinctive/authentic.
Weird, surreal, but, most of all, effectively touching.
Pretty superb.
Felt like a mix of Leonora Carrington, Miranda July, Izumi Suzuki, Laura van den Berg and Bora Chung, at the same time remaining quite distinctive/authentic.
Weird, surreal, but, most of all, effectively touching.
this collection absolutely blew me away!! so much that i’m writing my first review!! it feels soooo incredibly intimate and haunted in the best way. there were many small moments that felt so painfully relatable, even among all the weird fantastical shit. maybe i’m just a sucker for a story about a lonely woman but i’ll never get sick of them when they’re written this well. so so excited to read severance now!!
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Loved this one. Each ends on an unresolved, surreal cliffhanger. Very thought provoking. My favorite stories were Returning, Office Hours, Peking Duck, and G, in that order.
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Even the heartiest flower can wilt from overattention is a Chinese folk saying, probably.
Ling Ma's writing was simply captivating, and it made the flow of her stories stick and haunt you.
This is not your usual short story collection, it's weird, gross and eerie and those are all things I admire when they're written well.
I loved a handful of stories, one of them is "Los Angeles" a story of a woman who lives her 100 ex-boyfriends and her unnamed husband whose speech only showed up as $ symbol, which I found really amusing at first but I believe it's about unhealthy attachments and clinging to them for the good and the bad.
There's also "Orange" which tackles the issue of domestic violence and what it does to the victims, even long after they're "free" of their toxic partner. DV is an issue that is unfortunately we see has become normalized—at times even romanticized, which is truly disturbing in this day and age and I'm glad the author raised awareness around it.
There's "G" a story about a toxic friendship, the life of an immigrant daughter and substance abuse—you can imagine the disaster.
"Pecking Duck" is about a daughter who watch her mother worked as a nanny, I believe the most remarkable thing in this was the discussion of story-ownership and ethics.
The story that takes the crown for me is Tomorrow, if you're a fan of body-horror and are afraid of pregnancy, then this is for you.
The reason my rating was low is because I genuinely could not make any sense of the other stories but perhaps this is part of its charm.