I hadn’t read that much of Daniel Clowes’ shorter stories but I liked this format a lot! Interesting little character studies (lots of frankly unlikeable people), always love the linework and detail of Clowes’ art and there’s some fun style deviations here… one of those books where you’re like “oh yeah! Cartooning can be this other thing too!” and it’s refreshing and cool.

Love this. Little interactions and overheard snippets of strangers’ lives. Everyone around you is incomprehensibly strange. That’s da human condition!

Pretty art and layouts, autobio depression coming of age story fairly well trod at this point. Extremely funny in a few places - the therapy scene was very “oh my god, I’ve paid $120 out of pocket to see this exact unhelpful woman”

Trans girl genre fiction! I think of all the short story collections I’ve read recently (a bunch! too many! I need to read more novels now!) I had the most differing reactions to each piece here. Loved: The Masker / Hated (but think objectively is a good and interesting story): The Chaser / Mixed feelings on: Stag Dance (now desperate for more trans & queer historical fiction like this), Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (my god such an identifiably 2015 trans intracommunity story!!)

Very different from Detransition, Baby in many ways but obv some overlapping thoughts and themes… characters all complicated compromised interesting people I wanted to keep following… whether out of fondness for them or fascination with their weird little psyches… Torrey Peters is very smart and I hope she writes lots more books so I can read them!!!

I love Bolaño’s scary dreamy weirdo characters. There’s so often no really clear problem/resolution/arc/“plot” in these stories but they’re so good

Slow… i am intrigued and would like to return to this book but I was in a reading slump and needed something that grabbed me faster than this did

Started very lukewarm on this and then ended up enjoying it! Pleasantly surprised 

The dreamy non-chronological structure worked well for me. lots of interesting thoughts about family, disability and deafness, class, love and relationships. Repetitive at times but in the way where your friend is telling you a story in a kind of meandering way; I wasn’t mad about it. 

Would happily pick up another Claudia Durastanti book over lots of other contemporary literary fiction (autofiction?) authors. I’m often a hater in this category though so don’t listen to me!!!

Jeanette Winterson’s writing is so good and dreamy. I love her surreal asides and touches in books that are otherwise grounded in history. 

Enjoyed the act of reading this but I don’t think I “liked” this book. I don’t think I will ever tell someone to read it. But it’s full of some very beautiful strange language. Very wretched subject matter and story - it’s not that I can’t abide incest, violence, ecological disaster, human cruelty, etc. in the books I read but rather that the whole situation described here seems totally abject, unescapable. Like that Claire Denis movie about prisoners lost in space. Also highly whack in its depiction of fat characters. Idk I liked this a lot more than most things I rate 3 stars though. If you like destitute little myths and fables pick this up I guess. 

Nobody does utopias like Ursula K LeGuin :’•) beautiful and complex. due to science fiction I’ve been forced to admit that the anarchists are right but don’t tell them I said that 

so many beautiful thoughts on human connection, kinship, solidarity, brotherhood and the little moments that make up life and community and society. True journey is return!! I always cry reading LeGuin.