auggie_st's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
tumblehawk's review against another edition
5.0
Few writers can affect me on a physical level the way Lidia Yuknavitch does. It’s hard to describe. But you know how your bones and organs are settled into an arrangement in your torso that’s been settled through billions of years of evolution? Well, somehow Lidia’s fiction gets my guts feeling like they’re on the move. Intestines deciding to untangle, liver set aquiver, rib cage trying sometimes to open up like a pair of arms and other times to close in like a fist. Twenty stories of people’s lives on some sort of precipice, some edge; sometimes that’s rendered quiet and sometimes it’s loud. But these lives are crashing into something, even if its just themselves and the past. A couple early reviews have zeroed in on the brutality in some of these stories but there is so much beauty in that brutality and in these lumbering lives. What Lidia does so well that I’m in awe of is closing the gap between reader and page. In these stories (sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly) the reader isn’t invited into the story so much as they don’t have the option of remaining uninvolved. We are never let off the hook. Verge is out on Tuesday. Get it!
cebolla's review against another edition
5.0
Lydia Yuknavitch is the greatest living writer and this book helps to cement that.
lewis_fishman's review against another edition
5.0
lidia yuknavitch is so fucking good i cant even describe it
hannahledavies's review
5.0
This was a super quick audio listen at only 5 hours. Wishy washy Hannah chose it simply because it was listed under the works of one of the narrators I like. Boy oh boy what a treat this book was. It was weird and dark and gloomy and morbid and everything I thoroughly enjoy in a book. It’s a collection of short stories which are all amazing in their own right (bar one that didn’t do much for me). I don’t know how I’ve never come across this before or any of Lidia’s work (is it just me missing out or massively behind?) but anyone who enjoys a dark read, absolutely give this a go and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
creiland17's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
3.75
andy5185's review against another edition
5.0
Breathtakingly beautiful, brutal, gritty, deep — some of the very best writing I have ever seen. I can’t say enough about these stories but I can’t quite get it exactly right. Visceral, tough to swallow, sometimes dangerously erotic while also nauseating. Her voice so clear like a whisper in my ear revealing secret places. This one will be hard to beat.