Absolutely brilliant. Y'all this collection disassembled me into component atoms. Woww Arimah is a FORCE. This is what short stories are at their best. I loved reading even as it destroyed me. That first story, I was not ready! ⁣
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The majority of these punchy, impactful stories are contemporary/literary fiction, but a few lean into the speculative, like the title story in which a unifying formula that explains the universe, and allows for humans to fly or identify the source of another person’s sadness and remove it. A LOT going on in that one. Arimah’s repeated focus on how the world wears down the souls of her girl characters was especially devastating and powerfully rendered. Her hand is subtle in drawing a throughline in these stories, giving you so much to think about after each small tale is finished. Wildly creative, I was constantly hungry for more, and yet I wasn’t up to reading more than one story at a time because there was so much to unpack upon finishing each one. ⁣