Like some stories more than others, and got touched my some more then others. Overall a 3.75 stars but short stories inside it ranged from 3 and 4.5

this is 446 pages book that reads like a 94 pages novella, but feels like a whole library. 

It’s a Donnie Darko meets the cure for wellness in a cynically , funny British sort of way

And yes, I’m comparing it to movies, given its multimodal texture, its forcefull capacity to indirectly stimulating all our senses, its capacity to positioning us right there and then, feeling the Sun kiss our youthfull bodies, the sticky gluey sensation of our skin, and the intense smell of steaming wilderness, the dirt, the bugs, the moss, the nettles, under the sun, creating a vivid aura of lostness, tiredness, confusion and at the same time excitement, playfullness, and youth. Making all of us eager to know, what is almanby, and why shouldn’t we go there.

Resembling the feeling of coming back home after long time away and knowing that everything is the same but feeling like everything is different. The couch is in the right place but it’s wrong it feels wrong. The teapot is still there but it just seems off seems wrong. But its not just those, that are wrong, our thoughts are odd or thoughts are different our Beings are drifting around, wandering,  it’s hard to keep track it’s hard to come back. It’s hard to stick to one line of thought. you try to pick it back up. You tried to come back. Try to stick to the narrative. You try to stick to here and now, but you just can’t.

Memories get mingled with imaginary play, with bedtime stories, with dreams, with fears, with wishes. Like when you have a vivid memory of your childhood in a bicycle by a field full of dandelions, but is it really a memory? Did I just saw photograph of it? did I dream of it ? did my grandma told me it in story? 

But if I do remember it, is it my memory? is it my story? is it mine?  

The limits of self get fuzzy, the limits between real and imaginary get hazy.

In the end in the same way as the characters of the book, I don’t know what happened, but I don’t wanna know. I felt it. I experienced it, that’s all that matters. An almanby will stay with you, within you, like pepperweed poking through cracks in the asphalt.  

But don’t get me wrong. The book is dark, The book is twisted, can even be disturbing to some. But in the end, is that not what reality is?

It left me with this theoretical question: Are we less “us” when in altered states of  consciousness or more?

This needs to win tue the booker prize. 

Loved the first part, the second, not so muc. As an european reader

I think i needed to be more connected to this artists and this artists fandom to feel it to all it extent. At the same time would love a more deep analysis.