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3.16 AVERAGE
3.16 AVERAGE
Dark, incredibly written. So stylishly written. A great collection.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A bizarre little story collection. I think the titular one, the first one in the book, is the best. It was surreal but easy to follow, I laughed aloud several times at the narrator's dry humor. Some of the others were too strange for me to follow. "Abortion, A Love Story" wasn't about abortion, but contained the description of an absurd play and I hated it. It's hard to rate collections but based solely on my enjoyment this one gets 2.5 taters 🥔🥔🍠/🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
A bit creepy... a lot TELL ME WHAT THESE ARE REALLY ABOUT!!!
Loved it!! Still thinking WTF did I really just read about!!!
Loved it!! Still thinking WTF did I really just read about!!!
I'm still sorting out all of my feelings about this book. Usually, with short story collections, I can read about one a night. But I found myself struggling to even want to read any of these on some nights and they weren't that long so I had no good reason not to. I just struggled to figure out what these stories were supposed to be about or why I should care about any of them. There weren't any that I flat out loved and there weren't any that I flat out hated so I guess that's good? All in all, didn't quite get the hype for this one.
I think this will be one of those reads that I like more and more the more that I think about it. And I certainly will be thinking about this one, unravelling its threads and all the bizarre, jarring strangeness it offers. As uncomfortable as it made me -- I read it quickly and yet so many pieces remain.
Ranking my favourites:
1. You're Going to Forget Me Before I Forget You
2. Hump
3. Sweet Talk
4. Show Them a Good Time
5. Not the End Yet
6. Parrot
7. Track
8. Abortion, a Love Story
Ranking my favourites:
1. You're Going to Forget Me Before I Forget You
2. Hump
3. Sweet Talk
4. Show Them a Good Time
5. Not the End Yet
6. Parrot
7. Track
8. Abortion, a Love Story
~Even the catastrophe of my own life was something I managed with amazing slowness.~
~At seventy, after suffering several dissappointments, the first being my mother, the second being me, my father died.~
~They were a good pairing because she was a strange person pretending to be a normal person, and he was a normal, well-raised person desperately pretending to be strange.~
~They said I was like a person vacuum-packed, sucked in tight, motionless. My boyfriend compared me to a painting of a glowing, alien foetus he had once seen - powerful but unborn.~
~The first time his wife called the Police the woman went to the station with her own mother. They drove in silence. In the reception, they say side by side and her mother advised her to just be herself, as if that - the whole process of being herself - wasn't exactly why she was here in the first place.~