This collection of stories about dysfunction, obsession and loneliness blew me away. This book reminds me of Miranda July’s movie “Me and You And Everyone We Know,” in that it has the power to make the reader(/audience) profoundly moved and profoundly uncomfortable at the same time. Highly recommended.

There are two different types of writers, those that leave us in awe over their use of their language, while their stories are not so original, and the ones that might not use the language this way but their stories seem to make you actually FEEL something, and you can tell that the author was honest while not having perfect domain of writing rules. I think that if Miranda July had gone and tried to be the first type of writer, she would’ve gotten terrible reviews, but if we understand that the girl is a performance artist, and not a english major, or MFA graduate, we can see that they are just honest creative stories, and her style is not disrrupted, and yea.. she made a cool website for her book. She was linked enough to go from “hey check out this cool website” to “she’s only selling her book because of the website”.
Funny phenomenon. Anyway, there are good stories and bad stories in the book, like in every anthology.. but the good ones are quite good!

Too many stories from the point of view of stunted (mostly emotionally, although a few seemed intellectually stunted as well) people. Often, I didn’t even find that they went anywhere.
The writing style was fun for the first 3 sentences, then quickly grated.
Toward the end of the book, a couple stories seemed almost worthwhile, but it wasn’t enough to save the book.
Oh, and Ms. July, there are quotation marks on your keyboard for a reason. Please use them.

My wife asked me about this book the other day – where I’d heard of it, and why I was reading it. I couldn’t remember, but today Neil Gaiman reminded me. It’s because of the book’s website, which everyone should see. The book however, is not making a great impression so far.