I was both nervous and excited to be blessed with an ARC for Toad (thank you kind publisher). Excited because Dunn's GEEK LOVE is a book I consider a masterpiece and one I reread every few years that manages to have the same impact each time I read it. Nervous because I feared my undying love for Geek Love might make anything else pale in comparison and perhaps that is a bit of what happened to me here because I had a struggle.

I wanted to adore and love this book and give it all five stars but pretending to do so wouldn't be honest because there were several points in this story where I nearly gave it up because it was either making me feel depressed or I'd catch myself tuning out. Before someone with all the smarts comes here and yells at me and says "Well, you shouldn't have expected another story just like Geek Love, all book babies are different" I'm here to stress that I didn't. I knew going in and reading the blurb that this book was a different story entirely but I will admit that I was expecting a story whose characters would captivate me even if I hated them and that just didn't happen here. There was no emotional connection just a feeling of going along with the words and a strong feeling of "meh, let's get through this". There are some beautiful passages and painful insights here, don't get me wrong, but ultimately this book and me? We did not mesh and I'll be sad about that for a long while.

Toad is about an older woman named Sally who lives a quiet and solitary existence and who, as the story soon reveals, is deeply depressed. Sally spends the majority of the book recounting tales of her college years spent with a small group of misfit friends. It's all coated with a layer of grime and filth and ick which is FINE (I don't mind that stuff usually) but it's also told through the lens of a deeply depressed, bitter and jealous woman filled with self-loathing who quite honestly is terrible and thoughtlessly says cruel things to her friends. This brings me to the drabness of the story. The friends barely react when something cruel is said. It can be interesting to read about conflict but they just soak it in and suck it up or don't seem to care enough to get upset. It isn't until nearly the end of the book that some of this behavior (which bugged me throughout) is addressed in a small way. There's little joy or humor and sometimes it felt very monotonous and like it wasn't ever going to go anywhere (and now that I'm done, I'm not completely sure that it ever did). Books don't often throw me into a funk but something about this one did and I nearly quit at about the 80% mark. I ended up pushing through because I felt obligated due to receiving an ARC that I requested but I do have some regrets about ignoring my gut.

There are many reviewers who enjoyed this much more than I did and who are mentioning the depression but there are many other things here that some readers may want a little heads up about before wading in unaware. I'll put the events in a content warning for those who would like to know about upsetting things before jumping in. Also, none of these events are the reason for my 2-star review, I can handle tough content. It simply didn't work for me here because I never felt emotionally invested in any of it. That's the difference.

In the end, this book made me feel very gloomy and blah but not in any kind of cathartic or emotionally devastating way but your experience may be different.

I was really excited to read Toad by Katherine Dunn since I loved her other book Geek Love. Unfortunately I didn’t care for this book. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Christina Delaine did a fine job but I couldn’t get into this story and these characters. I actually took a break from listening to this and listened to two other audiobooks instead. When I finally got back to this one I was curious to see if the ending would be redeeming but it wasn’t. This novel is about Sally, a recluse, and her friends Sam and Carlotta. Many parts are grotesque and just plain gross. I didn’t find any humour. It’s a bit too long so I found myself getting bored by this story.
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Thank you to Macmillan Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!

I had never read anything by Katherine Dunn before. I don’t know if this is the book I should have started with; it is very depressing, overally descriptive, and just disgusting there were times I felt gross listening to the story. Many of the antidotes in the book felt random
This book was not for me.

The novel is small in scope--we are in the mind of a single smart woman who observes everything, and has nothing--but it is a mind so full of wonder and intellectual meanderings and truth that it feels like an epic story. Every sentence gave me a zing--zing--zing! of surprise. Surprising precision of thought. Surprising wisdom. Surprising humor.

I love Geek Love but I loved this novel so much more because it doesn't rely on strange unlikely people, or on events that would never happen--everything Dunn wrote here is both uniquely imagined and yet completely believable. And perfect. The perfect noun, verb, adjective, over and over. I was continuously upended and surprised by the perfection.

"He had no neck. If he'd had one, it would have been pink and covered with exzema."

I read via audiobook, narrated by Christina Delaine, and she has given an extraordinary interpretation, a perfect mix of bleakness, exhilaration, and wisdom. I recommend it.

Toad, a posthumous novel from the author of Geek Love Katherine Dunn, does not disappoint fans of the author.

Written in the the same funny, deft and capable style one would expect from Dunn, this book was a pleasure to read and also very sad and heavy. Quite a conundrum really.

Her prose is stunning as this reader expected, but the story about a depressed woman is really depressing and it is not going to be for everyone. Fans of Dunn will rejoice, Others, will be leary but won't be disappointed.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Toad is a previously unpublished (under published?) novel by Katherine Dunn, the celebrated author of Geek Love. Toad was her third novel, Geek Love her fourth. Let's get the obvious out of the way up front, yes, there's a reason this one was not published/celebrated. Long meandering paragraphs that try to elicit shock by sheer disgust. The narration here doesn't do this story any favors, flat and unengaging, I couldn't stay engaged here and, ultimately, did not finish this one.

Holy pontification.

This is an incredibly self involved stream of consciousness that could be more boring unless you are the main character.

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of Toad, by Katherine Dunn.

Everything about this read is totally surreal, beginning with the note at the beginning about the late author and how this book came to print. Even that I wondered, "is this part of the story?" It's all so much!

The biggest piece of advice I can give you while reading this (which feels unfair because it's unintentionally reductive) don't read this while eating, or on a full stomach. It's so gross. Like, from beginning to end. I felt so dirty reading it, seriously. And I'm not talking smut, or anything like that. I'm talking literal filth. Dunn has absolutely no problem diving into any kind of bodily function etc. Ugh, enough about that.

Sally is a deeply depressed individual remembering her time with her three friends. Sam, Carlotta and Rennel. She meets them all while attending school and the four of them become a ragtag group of frenemies who definitely blur the lines between love and hate. They support, they care, but they can also be cruel, and eventually a tragedy will cause a deep chasm in their friendship.

I will admit to fading in and out of this one, especially because, as I mentioned, it's very descriptive. It also doesn't move quickly. The whole thing just has a rank stagnation to it. But did I like it? Well, I'll never freaking forget it, so there's that!