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cdale8's review
2.0
Some really good short pieces that spoke my language, many that made me think "eh?" after reading. Enough "eh?" pieces later and I was just skipping merrily through the book looking for the gems. A few evenings' worth of reading and I was taking it back to the library. So it goes... so it goes...
kellylynnthomas's review
1.0
I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't. I couldn't finish it. It's not a novel, but a collection of two-page flash fiction pieces arranged by topic. So, there are the "Floods," and the "Failures" and a bunch of ones titled "We?" etc. Each story in that section is titled "We? #1," "We? #2," so on and so forth.
The reasons I didn't like this book are as follows:
1: Each story is approximately the same length. Super monotonous.
2: The prose gets super over-wrought in that annoying high-brow literary way that's trying so hard to be clever and failing so hard.
3: Although the stories are arranged by theme, there's really nothing to connect them. Who's this "they" who is happy? I have no idea. Lame.
4: Often, the stories aren't stories. They are descriptions of random stuff, or... nothing, really.
5: The author likes to throw Bob Dylan's name around a lot. Why? What does this accomplish? Nothing, except to annoy me.
Ultimately, I feel like this book is trying too damn hard, and falls short of any kind of emotion. Even as a concept book it falls short, because there's nothing to hold up the concept.
The reasons I didn't like this book are as follows:
1: Each story is approximately the same length. Super monotonous.
2: The prose gets super over-wrought in that annoying high-brow literary way that's trying so hard to be clever and failing so hard.
3: Although the stories are arranged by theme, there's really nothing to connect them. Who's this "they" who is happy? I have no idea. Lame.
4: Often, the stories aren't stories. They are descriptions of random stuff, or... nothing, really.
5: The author likes to throw Bob Dylan's name around a lot. Why? What does this accomplish? Nothing, except to annoy me.
Ultimately, I feel like this book is trying too damn hard, and falls short of any kind of emotion. Even as a concept book it falls short, because there's nothing to hold up the concept.
zwier28's review
2.0
I may come back to this book and finish the second half of stories. I like the first half, but I am setting it aside for easier reading and more fulsome stories. I love short stories, but sometimes they make you work really hard to figure out what is going on. I'm not in a place where I want to work that hard over and over again in short two to four page stories.
jasminenoack's review
4.0
So I bought a nook recently. I didn't read this on the nook cause it won't be available on the nook until the 17th but also because I didn't see any reason to read it on the nook. I bought it the day it came in, then phillips came in and signed, so I switched mine out for a signed copy. It's a lovely book, heavy with that matte fuzzy feeling and YELLOW.
Okay to the point, I think the author wrote the back cover, I say this because I'm not sure that anyone else would have any idea this is a novel about a young couple.
I think this is actually more like amelia gray's book a lot of baby stories that might live in a unified web or they might exist as flickers somehow contextually interdependent. But beautiful, if you really look for the young couple you may find them, but what's more important is the world, but not the forest the trees.
Okay to the point, I think the author wrote the back cover, I say this because I'm not sure that anyone else would have any idea this is a novel about a young couple.
I think this is actually more like amelia gray's book a lot of baby stories that might live in a unified web or they might exist as flickers somehow contextually interdependent. But beautiful, if you really look for the young couple you may find them, but what's more important is the world, but not the forest the trees.
doulicia's review
4.0
By the end I just wanted to be done with this book. But along the way I felt truly inspired and impressed by Phillips' gift for telling stories in two pages. Some sweet, some harrowing, some mysterious, some mundane, many with a surreal element. She makes these distillations look effortless.
savannah_jw's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Confusing but magical and deep.
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