This is a collection of short stories that are all narrated by solitary people living melancholic lives. The writing is extraordinarily beautiful, but the stories in the first half of the book are all essentially static, with little to nothing happening and the paragraphs often seem randomly ordered or feature abrupt changes in time and place, as though the author just added random paragraphs together to form a story. Yes, each paragraph was beautifully structured and well-written, but it turns out I need a little more forward momentum from my fiction.

The second half of the collection were a few stories that were connected in that the narrator was the same. While there were many scenes and encounters that were unexplained, having the same narrator gave the stories a feeling of progress and I enjoyed them a lot more, even if the protagonist was aimless and had trouble connecting with other people. Despite my reservations about this collection, Majka is a promising writer and I will certainly pay attention to anything she writes. ( )

Interwoven tales of mediocre small-town life. About love and the emptiness from its absence; suburban loneliness; lies and fantasies that could've been truths and reality but we'd never know, neither would the characters. Heartbreaking in essence, primarily because of the naked storytelling and the undefined misery of the characters. Docked a star because of some repetitiveness of setting and plot.
A wonderful read. ( )

Damn good. ( )

Great stories, each and every one. ( )

A wonderful, carefully rendered, and troubling debut collection of short stories.