A review by rlawkdal
Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

challenging dark medium-paced
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

Nothing like a collection of short stories to get me back into reading print—I really liked Severance which is why I checked this book out from the library. It has the similar haunted/cursed quality of slightly odd characters in pretty absurd situations having very relatable dilemmas and flaws viewed from a meta viewpoint that feels like an endless zooming out of a break of the fourth wall.  I realize this sentence is not coherent in any way but my brain has rotted from pretty much exclusively passive consumption of youtube and tiktok videos and I lack the words to better articulate how this book made me felt. G, Office Hours, Returning were stand outs to me. (I felt like I was trudging through the beginning but got more immersed towards the later stories, probably would have given a lower rating if the order of the stories had been different). Yeti Lovemaking was by far my least favorite story. My feelings towards the narrator kept changing, but I was constantly unbelievably AGGRAVATED by one of male characters in each story: Adam, Levi, Sean, the 'cleaning supply salesman', the DOCTOR... but I think it's through the characters that Ling Ma is able to make the absurd seem normal and it's quite the experience. 
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