The collection is a welcome reminder that literature can be not only a showcase for polished, refined sentiment but also an arena in which both reader and writer grapple — with imminent challenges, with their own psyches, with the uncertainty of survival ... Dunn’s pieces have an almost irrepressible kinetic energy ... While there are some pieces in the collection that are only single-round bouts...they cut to the quick of life and highlight the struggle for survival even in cultivated, orderly spaces. Her fascination with the mechanics of thinking and acting when few options exist lends her characters’ efforts a gravity that is wholly without sentimentality or overseriousness. That quality, in itself, is a knockout punch.
The stories offer a wide array of style and substance ... Generally hold up despite revealing their age. There does seem a haphazardness to pulling them together, but it’s inevitable with a posthumous collection of stories ... For the enthusiasts who have created Dunn’s status as a cult icon, no doubt this collection will fulfill their desire for a complete body of work. Individually, the stories are tightly edited narratives exploring a variety of themes, but they lack the cohesion we’ve come to expect in story collections.
For those who have missed her voice, this collection offers both the nostalgia of returning to familiar terrain and the delight of discovering work previously hidden in the archives ... for readers unfamiliar with Dunn, Near Flesh also offers a surprisingly strong introduction to her voice and obsessions. These stories span decades of her career, yet they feel strikingly cohesive, united by her recurring themes of bodily transformation, female interiority, and the uncanny lurking beneath everyday life ... Near Flesh may sound like literary necromancy to the uninitiated, but for devoted fans, it is pure Dunn—dark, funny, and compulsively readable. Even from beyond, her voice still cuts sharp. The collection reminds us why she remains one of Portland’s most treasured literary figures: a writer who found beauty in the grotesque, comedy in the horrific, and humanity in the most unlikely of places.
Delightfully offbeat ... Dunn vividly captures her protagonists’ attempts to cope with the turbulence of their lives. There are plenty of treasures on offer, even if the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
