Surreal Sad Lady Stories

I was super excited to hear a slice of life piece about a woman becoming obsessed with bodybuilding. Unfortunately, that story is the shortest one in this collection, and it's unsatisfactory. Although these stories portray female main characters, the characters focus heavily on their awful husbands and they don't have much personality or plot arcs outside of that aspect. Some fun, visceral, and truly bizarre scenarios are described in this collection which kept me listening, but they never have a purpose, conclusion or statement to make. It's almost like long winded poetry about sadly married and repressed women from a repressed woman's perspective. I wish more stories challenging expectations or gender roles existed. The reading voice of this book is really great however. It's soothing if you just want to zone out.

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Interesting stories

There is some surrealism, a little reminiscent of Yukio Mishima. Some stories are better than others, but overall the collection gets 4 stars. Most of the narration is great, even with different narrators.

This author does interest me and I would be interested in a full novel.

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Weird, until I caught on

It took me most of the first story to realize the intentional weirdness of the stories. They were not exactly horror in the gothic sense but imaginative "what ifs" set against the backdrop of normal, everyday life. The stories kept my attention. When the book was finished, I wanted more. I appreciated the narrators not overplaying the different roles, instead, applying some light seasoning to the inflections and moods.

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The Ethereal Everday story

Fantasy that is so relatable you hardly notice the impossibilities.
The English translation seems to capture the emotional undercurrents. These stories read like a chat with the most interesting person you know

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Very interesting collection of short stories

Most of the stories are quite interesting with unusual plot. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The narration was pretty good as well.

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Quirky

This is everything you could want from a quirky collection of short stories, though the stories were not as compelling as I’d expected.

Magical realism stories

I liked some of the stories, but overall the collection felt very uneven. The narration was fine but it felt like there was so rhythm or reason behind the narrator shifts from story to story which was strange.

magical, strange, delightful

¡ love magic realism. this author wields this genre with agility of a swordfighter. some of the stories are linear and tidy and others are expansive and inconclusive. the author is great at writing a scene that i am fully immersed in yet all of these stories are strange. if you like haruki murakami or phillip k. dick, you should definitely read these stories.

lost in translation

Many stories made no sense - assume it must have been due to the translation to English.