Review by Booklist Review
Readers of Taddeo's nonfiction debut, Three Women (2019), and first novel, Animal (2021), will feel at home with the cast of women who haunt her first short-story collection: powerful, incisive, deep-feeling people who chase sex and love, often as they run from trauma and other hurts. The title story is named for the dating app its now-famous protagonist, pining for her ex, developed: a program that coolly responds to lovers' messages on users' behalf. A dating app is also key to "Grace Magorian," in which Grace emails Venus customer service after her crush, a man going by DigLitt, sends her an empty message and vanishes. In the memorable "Air Supply," the narrator recalls a teenage trip to Puerto Rico with her best friend, its surprises and dangers. "How did we get by? we think. And yet when we look back on the past, mostly we see happiness." In Taddeo's tantalizing stories, seven of nine of which have been previously published, death seeps in through the cracks, but so does lightness, humor, and a kind of freedom.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Taddeo (Animal) critiques late-stage capitalism in her smart if sometimes cryptic debut collection. In the title story, a woman spurned by her lover becomes famous after she creates an app that allows female clients to woo potential lovers through beautiful online Cyranos. An older woman in "Forty-two" discovers that life is a numbers game when she learns her ex-lover is about to marry a younger woman. At a Malibu fund-raiser in "American Girl," three women--a busty waitress, a once famous actor, and a talk show host named Cremora (after the cream substitute)--all vie for the attention of an up-and-coming California politician. In "Air Supply," a hedonistic 18-year-old high school student and her best friend have their relationship tested during a portentous vacation in Puerto Rico. The stories are parts Didionesque anomie, American Psycho-ish brand invocation (Journelle, Dunhill, Barbuto), and a nonstop barrage of head-scratching non sequiturs masquerading as hip observations ("Pastrami is the polar opposite of Los Angeles," according to the narrator of "Ghost Lover"). Though the affectless characters can start to wear a bit and begin to feel familiar, they reflect the author's well-earned reputation for harnessing a vision of America populated by unfulfilled happiness seekers. This isn't Taddeo's best, but her fans will dig it. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Like her corrosive debut novel, Animal, Taddeo's stories portray women who have been shaped and often debased by assumptions framed largely by men, and she's ferociously observant of contemporary mores that angle us all toward power while crudely defining success in terms of sex and money, and failure as excess fat. In the title story, Ari has achieved unparalleled heights with a dating app but remains toxically, delusionally tied to a first lover who may or may not have violated her. In a story that pointedly opens, "The politician was beautiful and the talk show host was heavy," the host is delighted to catch the eye of California State Representative Phillip Coover--"brightly ambitious like all young, good looking men"--but he's using her to get ahead, just as he uses a has-been actress (in her forties?) to host a campaign event at her house. Elsewhere, another fortyish woman prefers young men but admits that for them "sleeping with an older woman is like having a vacation home," while an affecting story reveals a surprising connection between a seventyish man and a mysterious woman looking over a headstrong Miranda, who has abandoned her husband and child. VERDICT Frank, acidulous, surprisingly twisty, and blazing with desire that's often dangerous or misplaced; just the sort of uneasy reading that Taddeo always delivers.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Nine stories take us into the world of people cooler and more attractive than we are. Trendy bars, awards shows, political fundraisers, the right type of butter (Kerrygold), wedding table centerpiece (wildflowers in McCann's oatmeal tins), even the better side of the street ("the fine side of Bleecker, with the awnings and dachshunds")--all the aspirational pleasures you could ever want are on offer in Taddeo's first story collection following her big nonfiction debut (Three Women, 2019) and a novel (Animal, 2021). People magazine may offer pictures of movie stars, but here we actually get to experience sex with one. In "Beautiful People," a downtrodden prop master on a big movie set ends up, to her amazement, with the hottest man alive in her apartment, where he makes her veal osso buco and takes her to bed. "The first five hundred times it went in, it felt like the first time. There was no drug on earth, Jane knew, no man on earth, like this." The dominant focus of the stories, however, is less relationships between men and women than the triangulation (or even quadrilateralization) of women around men. "American Girl" is about three women eyeing each other around the hot young senatorial candidate they all adore; "Maid Marian" is about the jealousy of an ex for her older lover's wife. That former story contains a sentence that seems to crystallize the mood: "Noni was holding court with a few lesser-thans, in a corner with some Fernet and twinge." Always the women are comparing bodies: "Fern was skinnier than Liv, but Liv was blond and tall and her breasts were enormous and thrillingly spaced." "Back then, I think I had the better body. My butt and legs were more exciting." This aggressively shallow approach is no accident--look what's coming: "We would turn twenty-four and twenty-six and thirty. We would be leaving an acquaintance's funeral--heroin, Cape Cod--and the dead boy's father would turn to look at us, our rears. We've still got it, Sara would say. I laughed out loud, because I'd been thinking the very same thing." Like the Venetian candies in the last story, these intense little gems evaporate "like racy air." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
