RaveChicago Reviewof BooksThe stories seem to push the boundary of how many voices can reflect on each other, drawing each to their respective apex not by some intervention of plot, tying them all together with a bow, but rather through a growing exploration of how varied reflections of similar themes endlessly multiply one another, amassing a picture of something far larger than what any one perspective could yield ... this collection seeks that expansiveness through her telltale style and interest. Tonally, the stories emerge in a blurry haze, as if the focus in their shot belongs to a backdrop of the past, of history and memory, that haunts the landscape despite being cropped from the final frame, leaving the nearby undefined and ungrounded ... Set in these crises, the stories introduce a new dimension to processing already-fraught realities—a move admirable, at the very least, for how it allows Krauss to apply her retrospective lens even to our present world, casting it in sepia, a new sort of history. Despite the way in which past and future temporalities can seem to distract from the action of the stories, finding their weight through indirect means, these rotations of perspective—alongside cutting insights into psychology that Krauss sprinkles liberally across her work—create a gem of a collection, elevating the many merits of each individual story to a synergistic swirl of pleasure and beauty.
