Kirby has a gift for writing about characters in sometimes extraordinary circumstances with a mostly straight face, revealing truths that cast a bright light on women trying to make their way in an endlessly hostile society ... While Kirby has a clear predilection for the bizarre, she plays some of her stories straight, and those are just as entertaining as the fantastical ones ... another story that proves Kirby has mastered the art of short fiction, and it's a fitting conclusion to her remarkable collection ... Kirby's book succeeds not just because she's a preternaturally gifted prose stylist, but because of her willingness to take risks. She experiments with points of view and occasionally dips into metafiction ... And yet she also knows when to tap the brakes, when to step back and let her carefully drawn characters speak for themselves. It's a stunning collection from a writer whose talent and creativity seem boundless.
Shockingly inventive ... Piercing ... So it goes, dazzling story after story ... Through humor, ferocity and sometimes a healthy dash of surrealism, Kirby meditates on the fears, joys and pains of being a woman throughout the centuries. Every story feels unique, yet they’re tied together by Kirby’s mind-bendingly confident writing and her clear fascination with strong yet vulnerable women ... Shit Cassandra Saw is pure pleasure with something for everyone, especially readers interested in thinking deeply about womanhood from every possible angle. Kirby’s characters are sometimes sinners and never saints, as complex as the real-life women we know and love.
Bold ... Playfully confrontational ... The relationship between the supernatural and the everyday in Kirby’s writing imbues her protagonists with nuance and depth. The fantastical elements are imaginative and shocking, but never distract from the gritty human heart of the complex characters ... Kirby’s women are empowered by their complexities and wrongdoings, offering evidence of women taking up space in a male-dominated world ... These stories occupy a deft variety of forms — some experimental, all magnetic and accessible ... The stories of Shit Cassandra Saw consistently bewilder and delight. Ranging from mythic to futuristic and the mundane, middle-class crab shacks in between, Kirby’s sharp, double-edged wit sears the page with devastatingly smart storytelling.
A sequence of blunt wonders ... One of the most interesting facets of Kirby’s stories is their capacity to remeasure the links between prophecy and trauma ... Throughout this collection, Kirby experiments with form as a means of speaking one’s capability to witness. Narratives again and again rethink the distance between a culture’s core violences and our capacity to voice them ... But laughter is a shared experience. In all, Kirby’s shocking humor brings her readers face to face with one of those core experiences of the last decade, one that asks 'Am I believing what I’m seeing'?
Excellent ... The prose is sharp and calibrated to suit each of Kirby’s temporally and geographically diverse settings ... It’s all accomplished through risk-taking and assured, well-developed craft. This is remarkable.
Marvelous ... Pointedly feminist and comic ... With zany plots, unconventional forms, and playful, poetic language, these stories delight at every turn.
