I have a secret to tell you. I have a terrible gauge on whether or not I am enjoying a book as I am reading it. So I am likely to continue pushing myself through a book regardless of whether or not I want to be reading it at all. Partially this is because I have the ability (as a practiced English major) to force myself to get through books I am struggling with…I once “read” all of Henry James’s The Bostonians for a class by skipping all the narration and only reading the dialogue….
So when I tell you that I wanted to quit this book almost as soon as I started it, well…it means I shouldn’t have read it.
But I persisted. And why? I didn’t like it. I felt a little lied to when it came to the reviews of the books and the laudatory way people talked about it, and I felt like the author was also trying to lie to me.
Now. Trying to be fair, I understand I am NOT the audience for this book. I don’t like that imperfect blend of horror/fantasy/reality that a lot of book turn to, especially short story collections. This isn’t a situation similar to the Kristen Roupenian book where I have a formulated sense of what went wrong. I just didn’t enjoy this, or get much from it.
It’s similar to Kelly Link in some ways, and it’s similar to Angela Carter and Carmen Maria Machado in some ways. So if you like their books, you might enjoy this.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Mouthful-Birds-Stories-Samanta-Schweblin/dp/0399184627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548883533&sr=8-1&keywords=mouthful+of+birds)