A master class in book structure. At its core are the small, quirky details we all either pick up or drop in the course of a day, rising to the struggles between and within ourselves that we depend on to stay vital ... Within these stories is a deep understanding that the things we do to stave off the madness of life ... Has a spontaneous and intense energy ... Nothing is clear, and yet the ending feels, somehow, right — rather than handing itself off easily.
Rooted in a profoundly earthy tenderness for the human condition ... With winsome wildness, capturing the uncapturable, Bertino offers up marvels on every page.
Potent and darkly funny ... Delightfully bizarre ... Each story is driven by energetic pacing, quick wit, and surprising twists. Bertino once again displays her formidable talent for the uncanny.
Ardently whimsical, yet never centerless—solid stories about our tenuous times ... Twelve stories that slide into the magical while staying determinedly real ... Comfortable vessels for readers’ experiences of feeling adrift in a world that admits to no defining beginnings and no definitive ends. Even if the reader’s world does not include unicorns, semisentient balloons, or ex-lovers falling from the sky, it is a good bet the characters who experience these travails will remind us of our neighbors, our friends, even ourselves as we navigate their worlds in Bertino’s confident hands.
