A review by shawcrit
Our Ecstatic Days by Steve Erickson

3.0

The ending - that is , the point at which the long sentence running throughout merges with the "main" text - is absolutely gorgeous. Although I enjoyed this, I think the metaphors should have been reined in a little bit; I can only deal with so much magic realism centered around creepy lakes as birth canals, red and blue juxtaposed to represent either gender, emotional states or menstrual flows, etc. I love all of those things, but I find it slightly irritating when male writers especially over-use images like menstrual blood and birth canals and lesbianism, etc. to produce a text that feels like its trying way too hard to be a feminist text. That said, Erickson is a great writer and I love how the different stories and characters intertwined. So many heart-breaking emotional missed connections.