I couldn't get through this, and when I say "it's not you, it's me" I mean it with this book. The stories are lovely, really. Inexplicably hard to get through, though -- these are drenched in detail, spend a lot of time meandering, and spend a lot of time between characters/side experience. It's a combination of the length of these stories, the fact that it is a short story collection, and the fact that it builds with no real release that made this so hard to get through. I will finish it! But it's almost been a month and I need to move on.

These stories remind me of bedtime stories. They have the same winding and lightly magical qualities. Hard to follow for the distractible (so, me). I originally picked this up because Carmen Maria Machado cited Oyeyemi as an influence, but this reminds me more of Lindsey Drager's stuff (though that's still not a perfect match). Machado probably cites her for the detail. Of the ones I read, "presence" and "books and roses" were my favorites. "presence" started to go toward horror, but it felt too warm and light for that. Again, bedtime-story vibes. All perfectly lovely stories, but nothing insanely striking.