I started reading this book and found that it was not for me. I didn't want to review a book that I didn't finish.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

This is a very exciting book. I have read hundreds of books this year. 296 to be exact. And this one stood out as so original and interesting. I don’t know if I’m over-relating as a doctoral candidate who tinkers with her dissertation for two hours every morning over the last couple of years of pandemic… how I was wishing maybe I had a slight touch of COVID so I could stay in bed and focus…
But anyhow I think there is a lot of astonishing work being done here.

“To fall ill: Ella would ask the favor of her birth mother, her deceased genetic mother. The one she never met. Ella always invoked her when things got hard. Lighting a stick of incense, she begged her mother to infect her with something serious but transitory. Not to die like the mother herself, suddenly. Just enough to take one semester off, to not have to teach all those planetary sciences classes to so many distracted students whom she had to instruct evaluate forget immediately. Just a brief reprieve from that poorly paid job so she could dedicate herself fully to another job that paid nothing at all.” (6).

A beautiful but dark exploration of anxiety, illness, and pain. The writing was powerful, clearly the result of a mind that has thought deeply about both common and uncommon trauma. Affecting and upsetting in equal measure.