Review by Booklist Review
A woman visits an ATM to learn the date of her death. Time abruptly stands still at the end of a boring dinner party. A husband finally learns the truth about his alien children in a moment of great need. Phillips' (The Beautiful Bureaucrat, 2015) wonderfully inventive collection of 19 short stories is a wealth of alternate realities, from worlds cleansed of climate or devoid of creatures to times of space travel and the absolution of gender differences. But while many scenarios will be altogether bizarre, such as the girl who can suddenly see straight through skin to sinew and bone, others have a distinctly recognizable tone, such as when a new mother struggles to adapt to her recent life changes. Regardless of the degree of familiarity, in each story, Phillips explores themes of relationships and identity. As characters navigate their distinctive, often dystopian settings, they struggle to define motherhood, sisterhood, or womanhood and reconcile their own needs with those of others in their lives. This thought-provoking and deeply imaginative story collection is an uncommon gem.--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
High concepts and sly emotion animate this solid collection of allegorical fiction from the author of And Yet They Were Happy and The Beautiful Bureaucrat. In "The Knowers," a wife learns the precise date of her death via a kind of morbid ATM, then reluctantly divulges the information to her husband. A young mother moves to a town of eerie look-alikes in "The Doppelgängers," where she eventually breast-feeds a child that bears an uncanny resemblance to her own. In "The Joined," the world watches with envy as astronauts physically fuse with an alien race, achieving a blissful mind-body symbiosis not available to humanity. The last two stories are the collection's best: the narrator of "The Wedding Stairs" finds a life's worth of embarrassments have manifested as stains on her gown, and in "Contamination Generation," a father wrestles with inadequacy in the shadow of his neighbor's mansion. Among the other stories of wifedom and motherhood, this final glimpse into the male psyche offers a feel of the fantastic, of the playfulness and discovery that characterizes the collection as a whole. Agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The short stories in this darkly absorbing collection remind us of the hope and humanity, the warmth, joy, and love that can be found in even the bleakest circumstances. One of the many remarkable things about Phillips' fiction is that, even as she conjures unsettlingly grim dystopian futures, which seem to be an unfortunate extension of today's urban reality, or fixes her focus on untidy aspects of the here and now, she reveals something essential, enduring, and glitteringly beautiful about our most personal relationships: the ways our families (our husbands and wives; our children) can offer us comfort and safety, humanity, and love in a cold, uncaring world. She did it in her debut novel, The Beautiful Bureaucrat (2015), and she does it again in several of the 18 stories in this darkly delicious collection. In "The Knowers," a story that is especially redolent of Phillips' novel, a woman opts, over her husband's objection, to learn the precise date of her own death: "April 17, 2043," the character muses. "The knowledge heightened my life. The knowledge burdened my life. I regretted knowing. I was grateful to know." "The Doppelgngers" captures the terrifying wonders of first-time motherhoodthe ways it reroutes a woman's loyalties and fundamentally redefines her. In "Contamination Generation," Phillips brings us a couple trying to raise their 5-year-old daughter with a sense of nature's joy and wonder in a cement-hard city landscape, a world in which only the wealthylike the rich family next doorhave private lawns and in which the "grass for the masses" at the city's botanic gardens (reached via two buses and the subway) may be gazed at but not walked, sat, lain, or played upon. This young family may not have a lush, air-purified backyard with a swimming pool, like their neighbors, but their shared love, the delight they take in each other's company, and the thoughtful things they do to help one another muddle through make them rich indeed. Phillips' sneakily optimistic stories are all about finding hope in even the bleakest situations. "The thing is, the organism survives no matter what," the dad who narrates "Contamination Generation" observes; "the organism even thrives." Phillips proves yet again that she is an intuitive, emotionally resonant writer who is willing to consider some of life's biggest questions and offer, yes, a few possible solutions. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
