Bad Thoughts

This debut short story collection is my favorite kind of funny. Not ha-ha funny, not dad-joke funny, not even SNL-funny. It's dark funny, sardonic funny, holy-shit-she-nailed-it funny. Picture four out of five people scratching their heads, and the fifth one (me) unabashedly snort-laughing as I underline. It's completely disturbing and utterly delightful. The kind of book I'll recommend to my younger sister, not my mom.

My one critique: while the premise of each story is thrillingly unique, the actual narratives seemed to blur together. Our fourteen protagonists face a wide range of absurdist circumstances - for example, ‘Earth to Lydia' centers on an all-too-plausible support group that helps people struggling with capitalism to embrace greed and materialism, and in ‘Ghost Baby', our cynical narrator is “the spirit of a proto-child assigned to a couple whose chemistry is waning,” writhing in disembodied frustration as its parents fail to conceive it. As much as I love Alic's voice, I wish it had been more distinct from story to story - after the fact, specific sentences and moments are sharp in my mind, but it's hard to remember where they came from.

That said, I will EAGERLY pick up anything Alic writes from now on. This irreverent, biting, and unexpectedly vulnerable collection is reminiscent of Gabriela Wiener's Nine Moons, another favorite among the 200+ books I've read so far this year.

Thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Vintage and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.