“The longest story about the sexbot was pretty good. The rest was kind of a slice-of-life thing, and it felt like none of the stories knew how to end.
Breakdown
Girl Town:
A story about a group of female friends, one mocks the other’s underwear, someone loses an arm (maybe), and as a revenge for the underwear thing, the wronged woman burns the other’s sock monkey in a pagan ritual. This is like 10 pages long, all this shit happens, and while it’s kind of interesting, it definitely goes nowhere. It sounds more wacky and more fun than it is.
Radishes:
Two girls go to a marketplace. They encounter a magical food stand where the foods have mystical properties, but not TOO mystical. You can float like 2 feet above the ground, lose your hair temporarily, shit like that. I think the concept of mild magic is actually really funny, but nobody in the story seems to agree.
Diana’s Electric Tongue:
Best story, pretty good. Honestly, felt like this was a solid, cohesive story, and the rest felt like filler to make a book long enough to sell.
The Big Burning House:
This is a comic book version of a fictional podcast where the podcasters are going to watch a heretofore unseen cut of a sort of cult-fan-favorite TV movie. What we read is the preamble to the podcast, before they watch the movie. The podcast isn’t real, the movie isn’t real, and I still felt like, “Damn, no one cares about you, ‘quirky’ podcast lady friends. Get to the damn movie.” This one was a tough read. It’s like the transcript to a mediocre podcast episode. I guess points for capturing that feel, capturing the experience of something is a skill.
Please Sleep Over:
This one is the least like a story. A couple little things happen, but golly, there’s just not enough to carry this one across the finish line. This is the closest to a story your mom tells you with way too much detail and that doesn’t go anywhere.
And that’s one of the problems with the book: It definitely coasts to a stop. The end of Diana’s Electric Tongue is a punch, it would’ve made a great ending. But on the other hand, if that had been the last story, I think I would’ve felt a little fried on the quirky, self-aware weirdness of these stories by the time I got to it, and I don’t know if this story would’ve pulled it out of the nosedive at that point.
Carolyn Nowak is a talented storyteller. I think she’s got a real knack for writing bizarre shit that has a very real feel to it. I think I’d give a chance to a longer, more filled-out story of hers. I like her weird characters. Her brand of weird is fun, and it’s not floaty, dream-state bullshit. It’s cool.
It’s just that these short format stories didn’t speak to me somehow. Didn’t bring it home.”