A review by chillcox15
Large Animals by Jess Arndt

3.0

On a surface level, I very much did appreciate Jess Arndt's short story collection Large Animals for its wholehearted incorporation of gender dysphoria and queer identities into basically every story in the collection, but the writing style ultimately didn't work for me as much as I wish it did. It seems like Arndt excels at boiling down narrative and language into the barest essentials, which means that each of these stories is usually extremely evocative for their length (usually only a few pages), but they tend to go by so quickly that it's hard to get a grasp on what exactly is going on. I'd maybe give Arndt another shot if/when they publish a long-form narrative, which would give me more time to get into their storytelling rhythm, but for now it's not wholly workin' for me.