Brian

The first series I've read in ages that I would describe as "impeccable", probably? Just gorgeously, brightly, expressively drawn characters with deeply thoughtful and emotional stories. The tales in and around a world where superheroes exists but so do real, normal people. What a fun anthology series I can't wait to keep digging into.

This is a slim volume with three very well-written short stories you could read in an hour or two. I could feel the craft in the small, surprising details or the slightly slanted internal monologues of each character. Very enjoyable in its slightly acidic tone, too. There's just so little of it before it's over!

A challenging but rewarding literary achievement. I won’t pretend I tracked every idea as it veered from campus farce to Southern nightmare to urban political satire, stopping along the way to debate the value of protest, tease intra-party pettiness, even dance with the charged world of interracial sexuality. This book has so much to say that’s as relevant today as it was in the 1940s(!) — even if I could use a college seminar to help unpack it all.

This book will make you incredibly hungry and wistfully sad many, many times over the course of its several sweet and eloquent chapters. Zauner uses a simple and honest directness to unpack her relationship to her mother and cultural identity that makes what could be a mopey navel-gazing exercise into a real pleasure to read.