I read this book back in March. At the time, it was one of my favorite books of the year. It definitely, definitely still is 😅.

I picked this book up at a local book shop at the recommendation of the family sci-fi aficionado, and knew very little about it when I did.

The way this book plays with memory and disorientation, both in its content as well as in its structure, is deeply satisfying.

I also found it deeply resonant. The book seems like it has sprung forth from our very online moment of context collapse and attention atrophy. Simultaneously unsettling and validating.

Honestly, it feels like a spiritual relative to No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

Because most of the book is a collection of vignettes, like an impressionist series of brushstrokes slowly forming together into one scene, the longer, linear climactic story at the end felt sort of like a tack-on to me, in order to help give the book some shape. It wasn’t bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely clear where the seams were.

I understand this book to have started as a series of spooky short stories online, as part of a subculture that I don’t really understand (I wish them well!) so it makes sense that the author/editor would have the instinct to do some shaping when turning it into a novel. This is all speculation on my part.

If you like weird sci-fi, or weird books: try this one! It’s quick. I read it in two days!