miffybooks's review against another edition
2.0
Okay, I just finished this book this morning and I think the highest praise I can give this book is that it didn't suck NEARLY as much as I thought it would based off of the first few chapters. The speaker has this really consistent observational tone which is so annoying sometimes because you sort of get bombarded with lots of sentences like "The room was warm." or "I felt sad." where all she's doing is describing things as literally as possible. It gets really grating and despite the short length of each chapter, there's a lot of times where I feel like I'm just fighting to get to the next part.
This tone really works in the super surreal scenes and the scenes where there is a really captivating central object. Like, hearing her describe a snowstorm flooding her apartment in the most mundane and casual way is really genuinely engaging in a way that a lot of the other scenes aren't. Also the chapter with the gun, or her meeting her dead childhood friends were also really big standouts!
My biggest issue with this book is that with almost every line being direct description, the overall metaphor of a lot of the chapters gets really vague by the end of the section. Grief is such an abstract concept that its meaning gets lost by almost exclusively describing it through really literal language. There are definitely exceptions to this, like in the titular chapter or in my personal favorite, "The Letter." Maybe I'm just stupid but there were so many chapters were I was like what is the point of this! I could sort of get hints of where she's going but lots of these ideas felt really incomplete.
This book definitely grew on me as I got deeper in, and it was short enough that I felt like I could give it my full attention, but a lot of this felt like rough drafts that didn't quite say enough. It had some legitimately beautiful moments but I just didn't think it was all too great.
This tone really works in the super surreal scenes and the scenes where there is a really captivating central object. Like, hearing her describe a snowstorm flooding her apartment in the most mundane and casual way is really genuinely engaging in a way that a lot of the other scenes aren't. Also the chapter with the gun, or her meeting her dead childhood friends were also really big standouts!
My biggest issue with this book is that with almost every line being direct description, the overall metaphor of a lot of the chapters gets really vague by the end of the section. Grief is such an abstract concept that its meaning gets lost by almost exclusively describing it through really literal language. There are definitely exceptions to this, like in the titular chapter or in my personal favorite, "The Letter." Maybe I'm just stupid but there were so many chapters were I was like what is the point of this! I could sort of get hints of where she's going but lots of these ideas felt really incomplete.
This book definitely grew on me as I got deeper in, and it was short enough that I felt like I could give it my full attention, but a lot of this felt like rough drafts that didn't quite say enough. It had some legitimately beautiful moments but I just didn't think it was all too great.
skirkwalsh's review against another edition
5.0
This volume of twenty-three connected stories brings shape, light & movement to grief in unexpected ways. The unnamed narrator has lost her girlfriend suddenly, in a car accident—and becomes lost herself. The spare prose is beautiful and memorable. Caspers' writing made me think of Anne Carson, Willa Cather, Jenny Offill, and Dan Chaon, how she writes about the negative space of the missing, and what is left behind. In the acknowledgment, the author mentioned a reference to Carson's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED in the opening story; this didn't surprise me, as her work seems to be in conversation with Carson, particular NOX (the poet's elegy to her estranged brother). There is something bewildering, surprising, and tragic about these short stories, but they cohere into a whole that will leave the reader turning over thoughts about space, death (particularly of the sudden variety), and what it means to go on living. Fiction writers may also be interested in this innovative form and how it marries so well with the author's auto-fiction mode of storytelling. Worth a read. Highly recommend.
lauralhart's review against another edition
5.0
A gorgeous, heartbreaking portrait of grief illustrated through a series of collected stories. Each story glimpses a new chapter of the narrator’s life following the death of her partner. This book was haunting and deeply sad but also, at times, cautiously optimistic. I felt deeply for the narrator, could visualize Michelle, the world in which they lived, and perceived the hole left after the accident. I borrowed this copy from the NYPL, but I’m ordering myself a copy tonight.
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