All of these short stories are about women, and they are mostly dark, horrifying, and upsetting. Reading this collection during the past couple of weeks was a particularly visceral exercise, given some of the themes about women's treatment by men and society. Gay's portraits of these women is layered; again and again she has the ability to surprise me. I love Gay's writing because it is simple and straight-forward and yet incredibly powerful and poignant.

Midway through the collection, I was very happy for the short story "Open Marriage" to come along after having read "Break All the Way Down," a longer story about the loss of a child. "Open Marriage" made me laugh out loud. It's not even two pages long and I really needed that respite among the bleakness. When I came to her last story "Strange Gods," having read much of her autobiographical works, I choked up recognizing some of the descriptions of the crimes within. It is one that has a heartbeat of hope throughout, but it is still devastating. I was glad when I turned the page at the end and found not another short story but the acknowledgements which included Channing Tatum. I was the woman on the train yesterday with tears brimming in my eyes but then smiling when I saw his name.

One more note: is there anything Gay can't write? I was surprised to find stories that contained sci-fi, magical realism, dystopian themes and elements. I was not surprised at how well she fleshed those stories out, though.

Not every short story in this collection is a five-star story, but the majority are, and even then, there wasn't a story within that didn't provoke further thought or emotion. I literally had to restock my work bag with tissues halfway through this book since I usually read it while commuting. And while this is a five-star read for me, clearly there are some heavy themes within that I would refer to before fully endorsing this as a recommendation.