As is the case with everything penned by Lucy Ives, this story collection is pretty close to flawless.

Just as is the case with her novels and other work, Ives writes brilliantly weird meditations on character and circumstance, some of which merit some semi-uncomfortable but fascinating internal discussion for the reader and some of which are simply the kind of zeitgeist-y scathing cultural observations that make you want to leap up, book in hand, and scream to your empty living room “Oh my god, that’s so TRUE!”

There are no duds among this relatively short but top quality through and through collection. But here are its best offerings:

A Throw of the Dice
Cosmogony
Scary Sites
The Care Bears Find and Kill God
Bitter Tennis
Guy

Guy was my absolute favorite of the collection, followed by the also outstanding titular Cosmogony and the terrific Scary Sites.

Ives’ next book can’t come soon enough.

These are playful and intelligent stories that delve at times into surrealism, are curious about the world, and the act of making. The opening piece follows an aspiring porn writer with unwieldy creative prowess; the title story imagines relations between a devil and angel. Others feature a character cheating at a game of Murder; a dialogue-driven examination of the origins of male violence and the effectiveness of the whisper network. Some pieces are explicitly metafictional in addressing the narrative process: “These aren’t real people, and yet these really are the things they really say and think and do.” Ives’ experiments in form are fun and impressive, as in one story that adopts the form of a Wikipedia article, or one of my favourites, which tackles the second person. Whatever form Ives adopts, COSMOGONY is self-aware and wary of the stories we tell ourselves and others, complimented by exuberant narrators and funny, well-crafted characters.

Thanks to Soft Skull Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this title

I was drawn to this since I had read Lucy Ives' last book, Loudermilk, and liked it, but this was harder to get into. There's a few truly delightful stories (like the title story), but I found a lot of these blurring together with no defined characters, just interesting concepts/framings, and those weren't enough to keep me going.

A quirky collection of short stories that mostly live in the speculative realm. Some of these worked more then others for me, but overall I wasn't entirely in love. I don't think I was in the right headspace to dive into something this wacky.

I've seen this described as a "mood read," as in, you must be in the mood to enjoy it, and I agree. The first story ("A Throw of the Dice") drew me in slowly but inexorably; I found myself mesmerized by the narrator's sadness and careful loneliness. The erotic diaries she wrote in answer to an ad on Craigslist were exquisite, the best part of the book; reading them made me excited to dig into the rest of the collection. Unfortunately, after that, my attention fell off quickly. Nothing hooked me quite as well as the first story. "Cosmogony" ended abruptly, weirdly, though I'm inclined to say that matches the tone of the story. "Recognition of This World Is Not the Invention of It" came close to reeling me in, but lost me at the halfway point. I did not finish "Scary Sites" at all, and found myself skimming every story after "Louise Nevelson."

This is not to say the collection is bad or even boring; it simply doesn't match my tastes. Also, I do not feel smart enough (or old enough) to grasp most of what's going on. I feel like this will appeal to dedicated short fiction readers, fans of satire, and, perhaps, based purely on aesthetic observation, Rachel Cusk?

Thanks to NetGalley and Soft Skull Press for the e-ARC. Out March 9, 2021.

This was an interesting collection of short stories, but you really have to be in the mood for it.
And I was, mostly, so it worked. A quirky bunch of tales that range from speculative fiction to heavy realism, featuring female characters on the brinks and verges, whose lives veer from plain and unexciting to new and strange…or sometimes don’t. So you’ll have a variety that way. It reminded me quite a lot of Amber Sparks’ short stories, which I love, though these were less economic with their wording. Mind you, nothing verbose or overwritten about this collection, in fact it reads very quickly, it just isn’t as specifically sparsely phrased as Sparks’ work.
I’ve never heard of this author prior to deciding to check out this book on Netgalley. Apparently she’s an author and a poet, you can kind of tell that from her writing, She does some very interesting things stylistically, excellent turns of phrases, lovely and very precise brush strokes upon her story canvases. I definitely appreciated that. It stands to mention that the publisher provided a lamentably formatted copy, the stories weren’t even properly separated, just clumped altogether. And that actually makes you notice how similar the protagonists are. Although the plots themselves are perfectly distinct. Loved the one about supernatural relationships and the last or second to last story (the fairy tale like one), they were definitely the most memorable too.
This may not be the most auspicious of reviews, especially since I’m the first to review it, but, you know, it kind of is, for me, I’m a tough critic with a wide base of comparison. But essentially, the writing is very good and there’s a great deal of originality. So yeah, all in all this was an enjoyable read. Might be something of an acquired taste, but it is tasty and worth checking out. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.