A review by peeled_grape
Felt in the Jaw by Kristen N. Arnett

4.0

This was lovely. It's a collection of problems that are present but never fully realized or identified, both in the characters or in readers (or both). I don't read a lot of realism -- I don't find that I'm a huge fan of people falling out of love/sort of out of love/falling out of love because of an inability to communicate, etc. -- and sure, some of those stories were like that, but I felt like they subverted the type just enough or had a good enough B-plot to stay interesting. I found some parts of this hard to get through. I will say I have never seen images so effortlessly disturbing in writing except for when I read Yoko Ogawa, so that was impressive. There's just a lot of touching moments, or horrifying ones, or moments where the tension was so perfect that I ended up really liking this.

My favorites were "Notice of a Fourth Location" and "The Locusts," mostly because of their gut-punch moments. "A Decline in Natural Numbers" was great at frustrating me with language on purpose, which was fantastic.