Organ Meats is a story of two young girls, who one summer decide to be dogs. But really it is about the type of friendship you can only have when you are young together, about codependency and girlhood and queerness, about losing that bond and growing up. It is strange, it is surreal, and it is gross at times, not shying away from bodily fluids or the stickiness and grime of being a child who is maybe also a little bit of a wild animal.

This is a book that will take some time to digest (excuse the pun), and I’m still not sure  what was real and what was the remnants of a child’s imagination, but here is my attempt at telling you what this book is about.
Anita and Rainie are two young girls who perhaps through proximity or a shared strangeness, are best friends. One summer they decide that through observing the stray dogs in a lot by their apartment building, they themselves will become dogs, and return to their canine heritage. They wear a red string around their necks that over the years becomes more than a leash but a string of fate that bonds them together. A string of fate that tugs at Rainie’s throat and will eventually return her to Anita a decade after she had moved away. Rainie and Anita are bound by something deeper than blood, and when Anita falls into a coma without Rainie at her side and begins to rot away, Rainie must build her a new body. It is a story of Frankenstein as a love story between girls.

I saw someone on Goodreads describe it as My Brilliant Friend for people who like cannibalism metaphors, which honestly just about sums it up. Of all the books I’ve reviewed and recommended, this one is by far the one that is not for everyone, to be honest it’s probably not for most. It’s extremely surreal and strange, reading it was often a task of untangling a messy string of dreamlike stories, metaphors, metaphors that are actually not metaphors, and fragments of memories and dreams. I enjoy strange, weird books, and I really appreciate something that’s experimental in its storytelling, and still I did struggle to fully grasp this story. It’s a book that challenged me as a reader and required my full attention and focus, and despite being so short, it took me a month to read. But I am grateful I did. Organ Meats contained some of the best writingI think I’ve ever read, and in its own weird, gory, gross way, it told a story of girlhood that I could relate to. With everything said, if it still sounds like something you might like, I would definitely recommend this strange little book.