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A review by annmariereads
Bliss Montage by Ling Ma
5.0
Ling Ma has delivered us a seriously BRILLIANT set of short stories. But what else would we expect from the author of the expertly-written Severance??
And when I say seriously brilliant I am talking basically perfect. There’s an overarching feeling that unites all of these stories together while each is so utterly unique that it could be its own novel.
The stories were dreamy and whimsical, but also contained an undercurrent of frustration, like getting your wings clipped. Even the title “Bliss Montage” refers to rapid little bursts of happy scenes from a movie. (Cue opening Clueless montage quote: “So you’re probably going, is this like a Noxema commercial or what?”) There’s joy but it feels relegated to only certain segments, especially for women.
Each one of the eight stories involves something delightfully specific like: a woman who lives with her 100 ex-boyfriends, a woman who is surprised when a date unzips his human suit off to show he’s actually a yeti, a woman who takes a drug that makes her invisible, and a woman who sneaks out of an airport in a small Eastern European city to check on her husband involved in a local custom in which folks are buried alive. Y’all don’t even get me STARTED on that baby arm. IYKYK.
Sometimes these stories feel personal like when the characters deal with Asian immigrant parents and cultural pressures. Ma shines when she mixes these intergenerational stories in with the completely absurd.
I found each of these stories immensely enjoyable and devoured them all in one sitting. What a freaking writer!
And when I say seriously brilliant I am talking basically perfect. There’s an overarching feeling that unites all of these stories together while each is so utterly unique that it could be its own novel.
The stories were dreamy and whimsical, but also contained an undercurrent of frustration, like getting your wings clipped. Even the title “Bliss Montage” refers to rapid little bursts of happy scenes from a movie. (Cue opening Clueless montage quote: “So you’re probably going, is this like a Noxema commercial or what?”) There’s joy but it feels relegated to only certain segments, especially for women.
Each one of the eight stories involves something delightfully specific like: a woman who lives with her 100 ex-boyfriends, a woman who is surprised when a date unzips his human suit off to show he’s actually a yeti, a woman who takes a drug that makes her invisible, and a woman who sneaks out of an airport in a small Eastern European city to check on her husband involved in a local custom in which folks are buried alive. Y’all don’t even get me STARTED on that baby arm. IYKYK.
Sometimes these stories feel personal like when the characters deal with Asian immigrant parents and cultural pressures. Ma shines when she mixes these intergenerational stories in with the completely absurd.
I found each of these stories immensely enjoyable and devoured them all in one sitting. What a freaking writer!