A review by lydhavens
Without Protection by Gala Mukomolova

5.0

I have never read a book like this, and in the minutes after I finished it I found myself wishing every other book was like it. But of course, that would subtract from this book's magic—it is singularly captivating, and allows the reader to have one foot in this world (a world of Coney Island, delis, mattresses tied to cars, and wonderfully wild sex), and one foot in a completely different one (a world of fences made of skulls, witch's cloaks, and swans flying into girls' mouths). Sometimes, those worlds bleed into each other. Sometimes that happens right in the middle of poems, but the switch is so effortless it almost baffles me. As a poet, the craft in this collection thrilled me to the point of ambition. As a reader, every poem felt like another room in a large (probably haunted) house—and at first I didn't want to leave each room, but oh, I'm so thankful I did.