"Prairie" is a cycle of surreal stories set in the disappearing prairieland of the American Midwest. "Dresses" offers a portrait of literary fashions. "Art" turns to essay, examining how works of visual art and fiction might relate to one another; while the final section, "Other," includes pieces of irregular forms, stories-as-essays or essays-as-stories that defy category.
A medley of tangled nonfiction and some very intriguing fiction, linked by mentions of prairies ... A richer, wilder book lurks in the wings; perhaps the novel Dutton didn’t have time to write? Her efforts seem less startling in the nonfiction sections, which read like revamped lectures or magazine articles ... As any good teacher might, Dutton confronts us with wide-ranging allusions, thoughts and imagery, daring us to be flexible enough to relate to just about anything. But we’re not her students. We want more than hints of what stirs her. We want the real deal.
Swerving into non-fiction risks breaking the book’s momentum, yet the authority of Dutton’s essay balances out the dreaminess of her stories ... You’re never sure whether Dutton is still on the outside, or getting at the narrator’s anxiety within. But that uncertainty feels part of this project, which gives us not just a cycle of stylishly observed stories but also, midway through, the tools to read them.
[Dutton] creates on the page the disorienting and surreal feeling of being alive today, with our crushing end-of-the-world barkers in our pockets ... Dutton’s greatest powers are her immense skill with language; her exacting attention to image, sound, phrase; her commitment to creating strangeness and newness. Every sentence rewrites a million lesser sentences before it.
