frasersimons's review
5.0
Edit: so I bumped this up to 5 because I just did a video review and found I actually loved it a lot more than I expected when I talked about how clever it is at displaying gender dynamics and roles, agency, a logical minds descent and how that is situated in arguments now being “correct” and morally good, yet at odds with the behaviours of the protagonist.
A woman’s partner commits suicide and a woman becomes unhinged when it unearths past trauma and a myriad of unaddressed and y acknowledged feelings.
This is short and sweet. The voice, interestingly shifted from slightly annoying to exceptional flow a short way into it. As I got a grip on the plot beats and the first person narrative I landed on this being like the TV show Fleabag in tone and humour and, perhaps Virginia Woolf? It’s a stream of consciousness that has a lot of character. It’s wildly funny sometimes; a treat for me as I typically don’t get on with humour. But it’s witty and dark and perfect. I laughed full on for a minute due to a bathroom scene.
“Thank you for coming.”
And the cadence really puts you into the headspace of the narrator who reasons things out and often comes back to thoughts or chews them through for some time.
There is a plot but it’s quite short and more focused on the interiority of the character and illustrating, at least, to me, what unprocessed trauma looks like inwardly as well as outwardly. I see a woman who feels like she has completely no agency and is just careening from the strongest feeling she can identify with to the next.
The thing that struck me the most about it was, no one really seems to try to engage with her in any meaningful way. It would probably be very apparent. There are perfunctory questions that are essentially rhetorical, but otherwise all her engagements are pretty shallow and no semblance of real effort for a connection is attempted.
Though, this is all lies, in the end. There is no such thing as a reliable first person narrative. And the ending is fairly subjective, and does lean into the idea of a different interaction than was witnessed previous. Her rationale and keen observations and thoughts in relation to what is happening I found to be always riveting.
An easy read and easy 4 stars for me.
A woman’s partner commits suicide and a woman becomes unhinged when it unearths past trauma and a myriad of unaddressed and y acknowledged feelings.
This is short and sweet. The voice, interestingly shifted from slightly annoying to exceptional flow a short way into it. As I got a grip on the plot beats and the first person narrative I landed on this being like the TV show Fleabag in tone and humour and, perhaps Virginia Woolf? It’s a stream of consciousness that has a lot of character. It’s wildly funny sometimes; a treat for me as I typically don’t get on with humour. But it’s witty and dark and perfect. I laughed full on for a minute due to a bathroom scene.
“Thank you for coming.”
And the cadence really puts you into the headspace of the narrator who reasons things out and often comes back to thoughts or chews them through for some time.
There is a plot but it’s quite short and more focused on the interiority of the character and illustrating, at least, to me, what unprocessed trauma looks like inwardly as well as outwardly. I see a woman who feels like she has completely no agency and is just careening from the strongest feeling she can identify with to the next.
The thing that struck me the most about it was, no one really seems to try to engage with her in any meaningful way. It would probably be very apparent. There are perfunctory questions that are essentially rhetorical, but otherwise all her engagements are pretty shallow and no semblance of real effort for a connection is attempted.
Though, this is all lies, in the end. There is no such thing as a reliable first person narrative. And the ending is fairly subjective, and does lean into the idea of a different interaction than was witnessed previous. Her rationale and keen observations and thoughts in relation to what is happening I found to be always riveting.
An easy read and easy 4 stars for me.
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