Timeline was a mess, lots of unbelievable elements.

Natasha Brown is so smart and it shows. This book has major Industry vibes, and if you like that show, you'll probably like this one too. It's short but powerful, and I really liked the experimental perspective. Highly recommend!

Thanks to @vintageanchorbooks for sending me Why I Don’t Write by Susan Minot. This is the second collection I’ve finished this month for #storyseptember. I had high hopes for this one, but ultimately it did not work for me. Most of the stories felt underdeveloped. One story struck me as very transphobic and I was very surprised it was included in the collection. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth. There was one random story that had supernatural elements (Cafe Mort) that felt completely out of place. One story (Listen) consists entirely of unattributed dialog about politics lately but somehow manages to say nothing at all. The only story I really liked much at all was the last one - The Language of Cats and Dogs, about a college student who is victim of unwanted advances of her male professor.

Almost nothing about this collection really moved me, or made me feel much of anything except indifference. I know there is a lot of love for Minot’s previous books. I’m just very uninspired to pick them up after this one.

Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the first story collection I finished this month (#storyseptember). Often when I read a debut, I say something like “wow! I can’t believe that was a debut!”, but that’s not true, really I can believe it, because there are aspects that feel unintentional or unpolished. With this collection, though, wow, it really is impressive that it’s a debut.

The stories in this collection almost all stand strongly on their own. They don’t need the rest of the collection to prop them up. Many of these stories are interconnected though, and it adds another dimension. I loved how creative the writing was - in the title story, she addresses the readers directly. Another story is written almost entirely in letters. I really liked this one and highly recommend it!

Blindness is so, so good. It’s unsettling, uncomfortable, and straight up scary. It’s set in a city where people start suddenly going blind with a white blindness. It’s contagious... if you’ve encountered someone with the blindness, you will go blind. The government starts quarantining the blind in an old abandoned mental hospital, but they’re too scared to have workers there, because they’d eventually go blind, so it’s just full of blind people having to fend for themselves in a new place. One person, the doctor’s wife, pretends to be blind to accompany her husband to the hospital, and is able to help him maintain some dignity, for a bit.

Things spiral, there is chaos in the hospital and outside of it, people commit unthinkable acts of violence, and yet, Saramago still manages to incorporate some dark, wry humor. This book is beautifully written, in my opinion, but it could be confusing because there isn’t a ton of punctuation and it can be hard to tell who is talking, or how exactly something is happening. There are many very long sentences and paragraphs that seem slightly daunting at first glance, but once you’re settled in to the writing, it’s brilliant. It leaves the reader, in a way, a little bit blind, and adds to the chaotic atmosphere.

Eventually, the blindness overtakes the whole city. Society is crumbling, people are dying, nobody is spared from the blindness except the doctor’s wife. She leads a group from the hospital through the chaos to try and find a place to settle and survive, fearing what will happen to them when she inevitably is blinded herself.

This book shows you the good, bad, and ugly of people and how they deal with and treat others in a horrible situation. It’s dark, but I found it thrilling and hopeful and triumphant. I am so glad I picked it up, and highly recommend it if you think you can stomach the subject matter.