Growing up in a cult, Hough’s uses an examination of her past trauma as an intersectional interrogation of American values, prejudice, heteronormativity, queerness, and many other things. Some inadvertent topics too, I’d argue. Such as how internalized patriarchal concepts enable people to spot those traumatized for further abuse and manipulation. Her lived experience is pretty much the embodiment of this.

From being jailed by her abusive ex for shoving her, completely deriding the small amount of agency she’d accrued after being dispatched by the airforce for “admission of being gay”—the papers of which follow an individual more-or-less like a felony (after she’d been exonerated of a crime she couldn’t have been committed in military court)—to living in abject poverty, Hough details various life events that shape her, and further strike the themes running through her stories.

The schizophrenia of western culture parallels these events. Systemic issues in every facet of interactions with people, especially the disenfranchised, and the disturbing problem we have in constructing belief systems that are just as messed up as the cult she was indoctrinated into.

Sometimes resistance is simply survival in such a society, and we ought to celebrate that more in others, rather than internalized capitalistic ideas.

As far as craft goes, I listened on audio and that makes it so much more difficult to gauge prose. It was engaging, decently narrated, but not stand out. There are a couple quotable lines that were particularly well done, but otherwise it’s a steam or consciousness that, when exceptional, means you just don’t notice it. I’m sure it’s technically difficult to pull if, but neither is it as impactful as different stylistic choices. The pacing was good; never overstaying it’s welcome. Themes are particularly fantastic and of note, interwoven and made real with a lived experience narrative.

It’s an impressive achievement that exceeded my expectations. I do think the stylistic choice for the prose will put some people off, or else really click with others. Kind of like Virgina Woolf does.