A huge thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC!

One thing about me, I absolutely love a good short story collection. Especially the bizarre ones with magical realism and social commentary. Yes, a million times, yes! If you liked <I>Her Body and Other Parties</I> by Carmen Maria Machado, you will probably love this just as much as I did. The tone of the book is disinterested and that somehow made me care more? Definitely one of my favorite short story collections this year but it will not be for everyone! This gets weird and is a niche read that follows various unhinged scenarios and toxic relationships, platonic and romantic. If you listen to this as an audiobook, like I did, you have to pay attention because the tone is very consistent and stories can blend together, especially the first third of the book. It was all from the perspective of Asian American women protagonists, focusing often on difficulties immigrants face in American society. There are very relevant cultural tales like <I>Peking Duck</I> right alongside fantastical oddities like <I>Yeti Lovemaking.</I>

<I>Los Angeles</I> drew me in immediately with the ridiculous, detached account of living with 100 ex-boyfriends and a husband who only speaks in $$$. I knew then I was in for a ride! By the time I was finishing up the final story,<I>Tomorrow,</I> I was shook. Pregnancy is such a scary thing and this captured very relatable sentiments in a very drastic situation. I had already heard about the baby arm thing before I read this and thought it sounded stupid, but that ended up being one of my favorite stories in the collection. Loved this so much, highly recommend, can't wait to read more from this author.

This book is exactly what I expected from Ling Ma--the unexpected. Things are weird and we love it. The kind of stories you could pick apart in a group or just enjoy for all the surprises.

2.5 stars rounded up. I'm sad to say that I was disappointed in this short story collection. I typically really enjoy short story collections and I loved [book:Severance|36348525], so my expectations were high. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood to read stories like this, but I found all of them to be one-note, empty, and abrupt. As other reviewers have commented, the stories appear to be different but actually all feel quite the same, especially as though all of them have the same aloof, lonely, cold female narrator. There's a sense of hollowness in every story, nothing warm, comforting, or welcoming about them at all, all tied together by this distant narrator who is experiencing the same sort of detachment and unhappiness in each tale. And finally, all of them end so suddenly with no sense of closure or sense of an ending, almost like Ma decided to just stop writing the story. I think short story authors get far too much leeway with doing this - you're able to say a lack of a denouement is poetic and part of the medium, but it reads as lazy to me. I find Ma's narrative voice to be very strong, and I think she's better suited for long-form novels rather than short stories.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the audio ARC via Netgalley.

An inventive and unique collection of short stories. Each was as surprising as the one before. The writing was wonderful. While the stories were a bit strange, it was ultimately a very thought provoking collection. The audio was wonderful as well and a few time I wondered how things would be rendered in print.

Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage is a tangle of intimate stories that feel as personal as they do surreal. It shares the same level of craft, wit and surreality as Severance while exploring love, loneliness and possession. My ALC either had an error or some dialogue is repeated twice as a stylistic choice that I didn’t particularly care for. I’d happy recommend this to friends and fans of Severence or Afterparties.

I could have read ten times the 8 stories included in Bliss Montage. This is an exceptional collection of stories. There wasn't a single one that didn't have me thinking back to it even after I was finished reading it. I think my favorite was "Office Hours", a story in which a teacher finds a portal behind a wardrobe in her office. I really liked "G" as well, a story about a street drug that makes its user invisible.

The imagery that Ling Ma brings to each story is so vivid. The stories were otherworldly, ethereal, surreal, and at times bit melancholy. Absolutely a worthwhile read.

Thanks so much to Macmillian Audio as well as NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this in exchange for my honest thoughts

Once again, thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for this audiobook copy in exchange for a review!

wow….i don’t even know where to begin about this beautifully curated collection of short stories. i’ve never read a short story collection that genuinely made me care about each and every story. they’re tales of intimacy. Intimacies of heartbreak and trauma. they’re told in eerily dream like verse. these stories are exploratory and bizarre. they’re alienating and ethereal. i will be carrying them in my mind for the next few days to come i’m sure. G, Yeti Lovemaking, Peking Duck and Tomorrow are among my favorites.

Ling Ma’s new book, published this week, follows her acclaimed, prizewinning debut novel, “Severance”. “Bliss Montage” is a collection of eight stories which are both realistic and fantastical.

Ma has described how she often feels like she’s working in the horror genre, or on the outskirts of the horror genre, which she sees as the realm of the psychological. No matter how outlandish the premise of the story, she wants them to be emotionally anchored in some way.

She wrote most of the stories during the first year of the pandemic. Many of them came from dreams while some of them existed as scraps she’d had in her files for years. If “Severance” is an epic, “Bliss Montage” is a series of snapshots of people who are not happy, not sad, but neither very content with their lives.

Often the stories begin in a familiar way, become disorienting, only to end up unapologetically as speculative fiction where there are no answers. A baby’s arm hangs from a pregnant woman’s crotch,  a lover unzips his human suit to reveal what’s decidedly inhuman, a Yeti. There a story about two childhood friends who take a drug to render their physical bodies invisible.

Themes of immigrant parents and children, home and belonging recur throughout the collection as do motherhood, academic life and the worst parts of MFS culture and abusive relationships.

I loved the inventiveness of the stories in “Bliss Montage

This was some weird, wild stuff and I loved it! A beyond unique anthology of short stories that may not be for everyone but certainly satisfied my taste for deliciously odd.
This work was the first of Ling Ma I have read. At my library, we have a group of patrons who would love this writing style. I will most definitely add this to our Short Story Book List.

BLISS MONTAGE by Ling Ma is a great collection of short stories! I listened to the audiobook narrated by Katharine Chin and she did an excellent job! Within these eight stories I loved the exploration of relationships, Asian diaspora and contemporary references. I loved the touches of autobiographical characters and surrealism. The opening story grabbed my attention right away as it’s about a woman who lives with her 100 ex-boyfriends. Such great creativity and inventiveness in these stories. I really enjoyed this whole book! I’m very curious to read Severance now!
.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!

y’all, ling ma has done it again. i completely fell in love with her writing style when i read ’severance’ many years ago, and this short story collection is an incredible follow up if you’re in the mood for stories that are a lil quirky and very unique. the collection has eight stories that centre around relationships, intergenerational trauma, assault, and race, all of which covered their subjects in vastly different ways.

the first story (“los angeles”) has a husband as a character who speaks only in $$$! like what! it’s just so out there! another story (“returning”) features a country with an annual festival where people bury themselves in the ground overnight in the hopes of healing part of themselves. this collection is definitely not for everyone, but it definitely is for me.

BLISS MONTAGE
LING MA

I sat down to read not knowing what to expect from Ling Ma.
I had heard of the name and of SEVERANCE, her first book, but didn’t read the synopsis for BLISS MONTAGE before requesting it on Netgalley.

She opens the 8-Story montage with a story called LOS ANGELES (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) and it’s a stunner. She didn’t write these stories to be whispers and LOS ANGELES is evident of that. Both hilarious and sharply expressive it sets the tone for the rest.

Followed up by:
ORANGES my favorite (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
G (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
YETTI LOVEMAKING (⭐️⭐️⭐️) RETURNING (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
OFFICE HOURS (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
PEKING DUCK (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
TOMORROW (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️).

I thought the collection as a whole was varied yet similar in tone. OFFICE HOURS and PEKING DUCK were the most contemplative and TOMORROW, the most horrific.

All of them were thought-provoking and I enjoyed my time reading the audiobook. I look forward to picking up the next Ling Ma and seeing how a lengthier amount of reading feels.

They were great in short form!

BLISS MONTAGE…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for this advanced audiobook!

Dark and captivating, these short stories tackle a variety of subjects from abuse, addiction, motherhood and more with a centering on the experiences of Asian American women. Ling Ma is able to create full worlds in a limited amount of pages. I found these stories to be somewhat reminiscent of Her Body and Other Parties, so if you enjoyed Machado's work I highly recommend Bliss Montage.

At once weird, surreal and insightful, this collection of short stories stayed with me long after I had finished it. I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into, but I was pleasantly surprised by the unique and entertaining explorations of relationships (romantic, familial, platonic). My favorites were Los Angeles, Oranges and G. While not all the stories worked for me, as a whole the collection is striking, magical and thought-provoking.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this ALC in exchange for an honest review.

Does anyone else find it hard to review collections of short stories? Some of the stories include magical realism and those I found to be the most engaging, while others fell a little flat. One about a dysfunctional childhood friendship carried into adulthood, was life affirming in a bizarre way. Others I’m still trying to wrap my head around. The tone is ominous and yet somehow playful? Overall, worth reading!

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for this ALC!

Content Warnings: Drug Use, Domestic Violence, Racism, Abandonment, Body Horror (kind of??) involving Pregnancy

Ling Ma has delivered us a seriously BRILLIANT set of short stories. But what else would we expect from the author of the expertly-written Severance??

And when I say seriously brilliant I am talking basically perfect. There’s an overarching feeling that unites all of these stories together while each is so utterly unique that it could be its own novel.

The stories were dreamy and whimsical, but also contained an undercurrent of frustration, like getting your wings clipped. Even the title “Bliss Montage” refers to rapid little bursts of happy scenes from a movie. There’s joy but it feels relegated to only certain segments.

Each one of the eight stories involves something delightfully specific like: a woman wholives with her 100 ex-boyfriends, a woman who is surprised when a date unzips his human suit off to show he’s actually a yeti, a woman who takes a drug that makes her invisible, and a woman who sneaks out of an airport in a small Eastern European city to check on her husband involved in a local custom in which folks are buried alive. Y’all don’t even get me STARTED on that baby arm. IYKYK.

Sometimes these stories feel personal like when the characters deal with Asian immigrant parents and cultural pressures. Ma shines when she mixes these intergenerational stories in with the completely absurd.

I found each of these stories immensely enjoyable and devoured them all in one sitting. What a freaking writer!

This one is a collection of "eight wildly different tales", each answering a bizarre what-if question. I really enjoyed these stories and Ma's writing style. The husband that speaks in $$$$ will be something I will probably be thinking about every time I hear certain people talk. I think my overall favorite was G, outlining the effects of an illicit drug, rendering the user invisible and the toxic relationship of two women using the drug.
Despite the seemingly odd situations and magical realism, many stories were similar to known scenarios of some shared female and immigrant experiences. The narrator, Katharine Chin's, performance went very well with the mood of the book but I would suggest not listening to it in one sitting as the stories themselves may start to blend together a bit.

4 stars

This is a bizarre - in the very best way - compact collection of utterly memorable short stories, and I am here for all of it.

First, I was fortunate to be able to listen to the audio version, and I highly recommend this format when/where available. The narrator takes on some unusual situations, and the affect really enhanced my enjoyment of every piece.

Next, these stories are wild. Have you ever wondered what it's like to have a relationship with a yeti? Don't worry; there's instructional material involved. What about having an extended pregnancy during which part of the expanding creature is - umm - on the outside and interacting with the world (while the rest is still chilling in your body)?! Ya. "Memorable" is the word.

I so enjoyed the variety, wackiness, and surprising profundity of these pieces, and an added bonus is that some of these entries include a powerful sense of place. This is a collection I won't soon forget, and likeminded readers (i.e., those who dig a little weirdness with their short story collections) should queue this immediately.

As I read each story I kept returning to the title as reference, each story has a character that is striving for something that will enable them to live a life not of bliss, but maybe of choice.

Ma's characters are familiar, and understandable, and exist in spaces where their ethnicity makes them stand out and face scrutiny of the bigoted kind. There are stories of domestic abuse, unhealthy attachments, unresolved marital issues, unfaced familial dynamics rooted in the immigrant experience and the existence as 'other'.

These stories may not be easy to read, and that might make them more enjoyable. The hardships, scates, and unnerving similarities to our time. Ma is definitely a writer who infuses her fiction with more than a touch of modern presence.