We're back, for now; Calvino's Cosmicomics

I'm back! For the time being. Another site is in the works, as I plan on moving to a place with much more aesthetically pleasing free themes. News of that will soon follow...

I first heard about Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics in a New Yorker podcast. Some author read one of his stories and I was intrigued. When I saw an English language copy of the collection in a bookstore in Copenhagen (read it before NPR, bitchez!) a year later, I decided to buy it and check it out. It is quite an imaginative collection, with setting in all stages of the universe expertly composed and translated, many of which were delightfully meta and fantastic.

However timeless they may feel, or the subject matter is, it was very difficult to forget the time in which these stories were written, and the perspective of learned Italian men such as Calvino. Calvino famously believed that there was nothing more to do with traditional realism, thus he turned to other sources of inspiration. He may have been right, in terms of the Western white male perspective, that is. Women and other minorities have plenty to add to the traditional realism canon. This just goes to show Calvino's limited point of view, even as he writes stories with seemingly unlimited possibilities.

This most often took shape with a heteronormative male/female dichotomy, even when the characters aren't human!  I suppose this makes sense given that the characters are also anthropomorphized, and as this was originally written in the highly gendered language of Italian, such a dichotomy
is inevitable, but it became so lazy and tiresome after a while. Calvino could have been even more imaginative in this regard by refraining from using anthropomorphized or even gendered language at all. After all, not all species on Earth, let alone all the possible species that exist in the universe, have two sexes. 

I realize these stories tend to have a mythical feel, where the same shit often went on, but it was too often the story of a presumed male character in pursuit of a female character. Though the settings and ideas put forth were drastically different, the plot would be the same. It got on my nerves at times, that the female was always the pursued and preferred things the way they were before (which somehow imparted some wisdom on the male character) and hardly ever the one to take action herself. In some instances, one could argue that Qwfwq is an unreliable narrator, or that it's not been the same incarnation of Qwfwq, per se (this would explain why no other names recur). At the very least, we can't take his opinions of other characters' motivations at face value.

One that particularly stood out to me in a bad way was "The Soft Moon," an otherwise excellent story providing an alternative history of how the earth and moon came to be. There is another female character who is calm and expectant even as the world around them crumbles, and we flash forward to what the world looks like circa the 1970s, and right up until the last line of the story I'm there. But that last line... Qwfwq better be an unreliable narrator, bitter from a bad breakup, because the last line creates a caricature that completely flies in the face of Sylvia's character up until then. It made me so mad I stopped reading for a few days, because I would like to hear someone justify the reason for that line.

Most of the other stories I wasn't jazzed about didn't have such offensive lines of prose as that one did, but it started to become the same story over and over. At least in "Night Driver," the weak love pursuit premise dissolves into a pure thought experiment, devoid of any traditional trappings of story at all. The last few additions to the collections, like "Nothing and Not Much" and "Implosion," exist in the grander universe and bring up some though-provoking concepts while giving us settings and character forms I had never come across before. The stories really do improve, in my view, over time, when they're not so fixated on one-sided amorousness.

But there are instances where I find it difficult to excuse such blatantly male-centered storytelling in stories that don't even necessitate gender. It just ain't my thing. Hence I'm not a big fan of the first collection or the first part of "Time and the Hunter." Once I got into "Priscilla", the stories became more varied and interesting, relying less on the pursuit of woman plot. I much preferred "Spirals" to "The Spiral" - they were pretty much the same story but the former was more conceptually developed and experimental while the latter relied on the desire trope that I just got tired of.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy the collection; I enjoyed the "Priscilla" trilogy and the new stories from "World Memory," among others. Many were the kind of heady, out-of-this-world stories that I like from that era. But whenever a so-called love story became apparent, I just thought, "Here we go again." As always, the presumed male character was the actor, the driving force in these stories, whereas the female characters did not so much at all, except settle down with another male character. 

So overall, not a bad collection of stories. I more highly recommend the latter parts of "Time and the Hunter" and the later stories, as opposed to the original "Cosmicomics." They're all very imaginative and full of wonder but if you're a feminist you might get annoyed, so don't read them all at once. It remains that these otherwise visionary tales fall short due to Calvino's patriarchal and heteronormative views, which certainly took away from my ability to fully enjoy this collection. I give it just three stars for not being imaginative enough.

Movies No One Saw: Upside Down

I recently watched on Netflix a movie you probably haven't heard of: the fantastical 2012 vehicle starring Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess called "Upside Down." Worldwide, it made just over $22 million, not even half of it's $60 million estimated budget. When I saw the trailer way back then,  the visuals of two mirrored worlds looked dazzling, and it reminded me of my own idea nuggets of upside-down worlds, but the story was billed as a love story of the opposing worlds variety. (Get it? They literally live on two different worlds.) I didn't have much hope for the story going in. And... I was right.

The basic story is this: Adam (Jim Sturgess), always curious, climbs a mountain and meets a girl on the other side. (You see, somehow they can climb high mountains without any hiking gear and don't pass out if they're at the top too long). They fall in love with each other (though we skip that part), but some bad dudes chase Adam down the mountain. As he was guiding Eden (Kirsten Dunst) back into her world when they found him, he has to let go of the rope, and she falls and hits her head. He screams, and she's presumed dead. Then his aunt's house gets burned down for some reason.

Flash-forward to ten years later. Adam seems okay, and is working on some sort of anti-aging cream using the mystical pink bee pollen wisdom gained from his maternal line. This cream lands him a job at Transworld, where he's learned is Eden's place of work and she is alive and well. He befriends an "Up Top" worker named Bob, and befreinds him. With his help, he gets a meeting with Eden. When he meets her, he finds out she has amnesia as a result of her head injury. (Thank goodness she didn't die though, right? Even though her head was like, bleeding pretty bad and it was the top of a friggin' mountain.)

So begins a hazardous quest to court her and win her heart. Why is this complicated? Well, for one, the two worlds, Up Top and Down Below, are like the First and Third Worlds. Up Top is prosperous at the expense of Down Below, and treats the people of Down Below as inferior. Casual interaction is strongly discouraged (Yet Bob practically yells at him in their cubicle scenes together). Also, everything, literally everything, in these two worlds are oriented to their homeworld's gravity. Even when Adam sneaks into the Up Top floors, his pee still goes in the Down Below direction. How could this work? Why is it such a big deal if someone from Down Below "infiltrates" Up Top? It's not like he can stay very long. (How does he stay in Up Top? Using weighted metal from Up Top's world, as they are oriented to Up Top's gravity.)

Even though the weights keeping him in Up Top are liable to burn up, he continues to sneak through to get to his lady love, and half-assedly courts her. Eventually, though, she learns the truth, and remembers Adam and their teenage fling. They reunite on the mountain where they met, but not for long. After a disorienting chase scene, and the seemingly definitive defeat of Adam, we get the tidy, happy ending, and a tentative solution to the opposing gravity problem, that we all were hoping for.

This movie is a prime example of how important story is for a movie to really work. "Upside Down" has a great concept: two different worlds with two different gravities? Sounds cool. It looks cool, and there are some eye-popping visuals, especially when we have the contrast of Up Top's and Down Below's orientations. The scenery looks absolutely gorgeous, especially the mountains, even if the whole teal/orange contrast is overused. There is at once a sense of magic, and science fictional elements.

"Divergent:" nice try, but no "Hunger Games"

For once, I am being culturally relevant, and discussing the hit novel by Veronica Roth, which is also a movie coming out this weekend, Divergent. I have friends who have enjoyed this book, but for a long time I've been apprehensive. The premise sounded a lot like Hunger Games lite, and I'm loath to waste my time with posers and pretenders. But the good reviews and intriguing movie trailer compelled me to pick up the book and give it a read. And I put the book down, having read the whole thing, confused. I'm not sure if I liked it or if I didn't. And I sure came up with a lot of questions--the bad kind of questions, the ones that poke holes in razor-thin plots and deflate the story like a bloated balloon.

A quick run-down of the plot: the time comes the main character, Beatrice,  a.k.a. Tris, to take the faction aptitude test to see if she should stay in her own faction or switch to another. Her results reveal that she is Divergent: uncategorizable, and somehow dangerous. After giving it some thought, she decides to switch to the Dauntless faction and goes through a grueling initiation process, all the while uncovering a plot to overthrow society as she knows it.

The story of Divergent has a lot in common with the Hunger Games: the setting is a self-contained society formed likely after environmental and sociopolitcal disaster on the brink of collapse; the main character is a young woman who calculates every move she makes, whose friends she views as competitors more often than not; and there's plenty of deadly violence involved in the bulk of the story. The differences lie in the premise and the love story: this dystopian society has more obvious social stratification, with individuals divided in five factions, each modeled after a virtue that the faction most values (honesty, kindness, knowledge, selflessness, and courage), and the leftovers are called factionless (basically pariahs who do most of society's dirty work); the love story is your run-of-the mill YA genre love story, both parties uncertain and shy from the start but quickly fall for each other.

The story had a lot of potential; the premise could have taken us to some interesting places, and raise questions about the nature of humanity and society that even teens could pick up on. I was interested enough in what would happen. I kept reading, even as I kept stumbling on bothersome questions of logic and inconsistency, but I didn't care that much about the characters. Everything seemed to happen too fast, in a way that feels kind of arbitrary.

So, first, with the questions: How long ago did they decide that it was a good idea that each faction should just take control of certain sectors of career tracks? And for Abnegation (selfless) to be the only faction in charge of the government? I mean, each faction deserves representation, and Candor represents honesty, so wouldn't that also be valued in government and politics? And Dauntless seems to be a parody of itself when Tris (the heroine) goes through the initation trials: it's all violence and ridiculous derring-do for basically no reason. Why did they have to fight each other so brutally? How quickly did their wounds heal? Why the fuck did they have to cut their palms at the initiation ceremony and there was no mention of a nurse on hand?  I mean, it's not like it's a cut like that heals instantly!

More questions arose as I read the story. When Tris's mom comes on Visiting Day, she tells her to stay in the middle of the pack. But then when it comes to the simulation stage of initiation, she goes on to be easily the best, and that doesn't raise red flags? (other than being the target of the comically predictable bullies, yawn) Then love interest Tobias goes and gives her a preview of what's to come in the final stage, giving her a huge leg up in the competition. Playing favorites much? Why does it matter if she's first, if all that matters is that she makes the cut? At least in The Hunger Games, Katniss had to be first, or else she would be killed. And the whole Erudite scheme to use the Dauntless to kill and capture Abnegation felt tacked on, after we've spent all this time on initation and only hints of such an attack here and there. The whole story was a disjointed mess, reeking of first novelism. Especially in the beginning, the boring sentence pattern of "I do this. I do this. Then I do this," reared its ugly head, causing me to skim over to the more interesting parts.

I mentioned earlier that I did not care about the characters. There were some interesting moments, like Tris looking at herself in the mirror in the beginning, the zipline scene, a few of the more tense, intimate moments with Tobias. Roth can paint vibrant scenes and action sequences. But the only remotely fleshed out characters were Tobias and Tris, maybe her mom. The rest, especially the villains, were two-dimensional at most.

Plenty of characters die, but I was neither shocked nor saddened by their deaths. Both her parents die, and she witnesses it, which I felt was a little convenient; she kills her so-called friend Will, I guess so there's some personal conflict to start the next book with; and Al kills himself just when he starts being a jerk, to be swiftly forgotten for most of the rest of the book. (not to mention there's some posthumous shaming involved) Her parents seemed to be emotionally distant from her until towards the end of the book, yet there is no sense of tragedy that she never really knew them. Even her so-called friend Christina, she didn't seem to have a deep connection with. I didn't really get that connection with anyone except Tobias, and yet she claims to love all of these other people? It seems that Roth spent too much time focusing on action and plot rather than developing her characters or forging meaningful connections between them.

Finally, the character of Tris. Why is she so special? Why is being Divergent not a thing? It seems highly improbable, especially among those initiates who decided to change factions, that only about a handful of people in each faction are Divergent. Why is everyone else in Dauntless apparently so dumb? Why does she not think she's pretty, when she's thin and blonde? Does Abnegation have low self-esteem on purpose? (I really hope Shailene Woodley doesn't claim to be not pretty in the movie; what an eye-roller that would be) Why did the people who formed this society think that giving people the choice to leave their faction was a good idea in the first place, if they insist on such rigid conformity to faction norms, and divergence is such a bad thing, anyway?

All right, I'll stop with the questions. There were plenty more, though.

This book wasn't all bad. There were some cool moments and interesting writing, and some allowances can be made for the two-dimensional hero/villian set-up, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Amateur Hour YA is up to snuff for bestseller status. Will I read the second one? Maybe, maybe not. Though I think I'm going back to grown-up novels for a while. Two stars out of five.

Buying In and Selling Out

Predictably, I haven't had much time to update this blog (got some big stuff going on this year), but the book I have most recently read, unlike books like Game of Thrones, did not get a lot of press during its release, at least not that I've seen. I couldn't even find the book at Barnes and Noble. I ordered the hardcover through Amazon.com (I may not rule out self-publishing through that platform, but I will only buy a Kindle if I literally have no choice) as it was apparently the only place I could find it. (Again, no choice) And it turned out to be a breezy, fascinating read about breaking into investment banking, involving sacrifices that most people would not be willing to make for prestige and the almighty dollar.

Buying In,  by Laura Hemphill, who apparently has a background in financial services, follows the "conversion" of first-year analyst Sophie Landgraf at the fictitious investment banking firm Sterling. When the story begins, Sophie is uncertain and full of self-doubt, snooping through her superiors' office to learn more about them and how they came to be a success. By the end of the story, even as she has lost her job and the big merger deal she was on the task force with out of her hands, she comes back for more, confident that now she knows how to play the game.

Though the story takes place during the period of collapse that rippled through Wall Street in 2007 and 2008, Sophie is tasked with a merger project that has absolutely nothing to do with what caused the Great Recession. Rather, she and her colleagues, and arguably Sterling itself, are casualties of this collapse. But this doesn't make the story any less compelling. The time period serves to add a poignant note to Sophie's Sterling saga, in which all the work she puts into the AlumiCorp-Roll-Rite merger deal is no longer given credit.

The story is Sophie's story, but we get into the heads of the other major players in the merger deal: Ethan Pearce, the man in charge; Vasu Mehta, the VP of the Industrial Group; and Jake Hutchinson, the CEO of AlumiCorp who takes a shine to Sophie, and a victim of much bad luck himself. Through these other characters we get an idea of how the financial services industry works and what it does to people. Ethan is self-serving and ruthless; Vasu is disillusioned and depressed; and Hutch has no time for phoniness and typical bankers' spin.

Interestingly, glimpses of Sophie's possible future can be seen in the lives of the other characters, even those whose heads we don't get into. There is Vasu, who has given so much of his life in years and in days to this company, starts to miss seeing his daughter grow up and visiting his ailing mother before she passes away, questioning why he was giving so much for this company that hardly appeared to value him at all. There is Nancy Cho, in whose office Sophie finds evidence of a pathetic love life and personal dissatisfaction, even as Cho puts on a front of satisfaction with her success. Then there are the people of Sophie's personal life, who express active disagreement with the choices Sophie is making and her dedication to a job that seems to yield no real satisfaction. And one of whom, her boyfriend Will, rejects her for this choice. One wonders if it will be long before this happens to the others.

Even with all the hard work she put into the project, Sophie was in the end just a number, a cog in the machine; yet it doesn't even put her off from further pursuing the financial services industry. This makes Sophie's character a fascinating if frustrating figure, especially in the face of making it in a male-dominated industry. We witness her conversion in full, as she internalizes Sterling superiors' words of wisdom and warning, and twists her mother's advice to fit her own motivations.

The only apparent reasons she broke into the industry in the first place were one, to live in New York and two, to make a lot of money. She's coming in with the "right" reasons, perhaps, but with the "wrong" attitude, such as the idea that she would be able to trust anyone she worked with, no matter how much time she spent with these people. And in the end, when she was thrown under the bus with all the rest, instead of looking into other, perhaps more self-fulfilling (rather than self-serving) career paths, she doubles down and negotiates her way to a job at Ethan's new firm.

As a person who knew enough about the investment banking industry to understand that it's unfettered capitalism at its worst, but certainly not that much about the ins and outs of the industry (like, wtf is a "model"?), I found this to be an enlightening read. But even by the end of this story, one nagging question still remains, one that Will early in the book asks Sophie herself: why is this important? What sort of satisfaction is she getting out of this; being barely able to get by on her own, when plenty of other people doing other jobs do the same thing? (perhaps not on such an expensive scale, but still.) I at first interpreted it as a phase Sophie was going through, in reaction against her parents' blase attitude about money...and the fact that, especially after her mother's death, her family appeared to have none. (Though now that I think about it, I wonder...does Sophie have no other living relatives other than her father? There is no mention of any. I suppose it's possible, but still...)

Madoka Magica: Another Anime Review

I don't really watch anime anymore. I used to be a big fan of the genre, back when I was into cartoons in general. Only, it was certain kinds of anime that got my attention. Y'all can keep your Dragonball and Mobile Suit Gundam. Sailor Moon was my gateway drug, and defined my taste in the burgeoning offerings from Japan. Most of the ones I got into, therefore, are about girls with powers. But after a while it became more of a hassle and everything started seeming like the same old, same old, so I lost interest. But I'm not totally against getting into new stuff.

Someone on the internet alluded to Madoka Magica, and it piqued my interest. The Wikipedia summary blew me away, and when I saw the entire series was available for free on Hulu, I was like, "I have to watch this!" And... it is FUCKING AMAZING.

The Wikipedia entry contains some spoilers, but it only intrigued me further. Like a lot of the anime I've enjoyed in the past, it's part of the magical girl genre, tropes and all. But you ain't never seen a magical girl anime like this before. This anime is dark, and an ominous atmosphere is present right in the beginning, before we technically know that something is off. Don't let the overly simplistic character designs fool you about the animation, either: it is at times strange, creepy, gorgeous, seizure-inducing, and experimental. There's not stock footage in use at all.

The story hinges on the protagonist Madoka's decision whether to become a magical girl. The current magical girl of fictional city Mitakihara, Mami, shows the ropes of being a magical girl to Madoka and her best friend, Sayaka. Meanwhile, a mysterious transfer student (another magical girl archetype), Homura, seems intent on preventing Madoka from becoming a magical girl at all costs. But fighting witches couldn't be that bad, right? (It only gets trippier, darker, and spoilery from there)

I've never seen a stare so sinister

 All the tropes are there: the protagonist is rather unexceptional in every way except for her kindness and compassion and capacity to believe, the magical girls wear elaborate, feminine costumes in themed colors, there's a magical creature companion who is more than what he seems, the source of their power resides at an emotional core, of sorts, and there comes a time when our heroine has to save the world. However, most of these are turned absolutely upside down and inside out. The main character doesn't become a magical girl until the end, and you absolutely don't want her to do it. One could even argue that Madoka isn't the protatgonist, but Homura, who makes the story possible, is the true protagonist (or at least a co-protagonist). Either way, you end up cheering for them both, and hope they manage to defeat Kyubey and change their fate.

Success Somewhere Else: Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

We hear a lot of things about China, from its oppressive government to how it's going to take over the world (wouldn't count on that). But there is another way to understand what's happening in China, and that is to read the stories of people who actually live there. Oppressive the government may be, but it is one of the more economically prosperous countries in the Asian continent. Tash Aw's place story Five Star Billionaire accounts for a more nuanced perspective on the way life is in modern China, especially city life.

The five characters who come to Shanghai, China's largest city and the most populous city in the world, each want a chance to succeed in ways familiar to Western audiences. The Chinese economy is fully capitalist, and the protagonists' goals start out, at least, as purely material. But committing oneself to the capitalist agenda casts out the virtues of humanity that these characters, one by one, realize they have lost, perhaps irrevocably. In this entangled narrative, Aw shows us that capitalist ideology has the same effect here, to the detriment of the environment and humanity, in the most effective way possible: through small, individual stories.

The tale starts out strong, with an immersive introduction to Phoebe, one of two heroines in the book...though none of the characters can hardly described as heroic. She's an illegal immigrant but desperate to achieve materialistic and romantic success, expressed beautifully in a scene with a wealthy-looking young couple. This first chapter, which weaved in backstory with a wonderfully immersive scene, hooked me immediately.

The other characters, however, had less gripping introductions, Aw dropping the backstory almost all at once for the rest--most notably, Justin and Gary. Justin is the heir and proprietor to the massive family business of LKH Holdings, but we come in just before the moment of collapse. Gary ends up having a similar breakdown and drastic change of fortune, except he's a famous pop star, having won the genetic and marketable talent lottery, who ends up resenting his own fans and hating fame. The other female protagonist, Yinghui, is a successful businesswoman, but is feeling the stigma of being a "leftover" woman. Her introductory chapter is also excellent.

There is a fifth protagonist, who reveals his backstory slowly, recounting moments in his youth and more recent history to give us hints of his true motivations for success, remaining an ever-mysterious figure even as he enters the narratives of the other characters. And the reason why he is so successful may surprise you.

Naturally, as a lot of these novels go, the characters' lives each intertwine at one point or another. In a few cases, it's unknowingly, but we, the reader, are clued in. Seeing how these characters' lives connect is part of the fun in reading, so I won't reveal to much plot, but they all have a few things in common: they all are not native Chinese (all except Gary are from Malaysia), they all have achieved financial success (except for Phoebe, who manages to get there through deception), and they all are lacking in the personal life department, as none of them are married or have steady relationships. In the end, they all feel empty inside, as it turns out that financial success alone does not complete one's life.

The characters are also very calculated in their interactions with most of the people they meet, figuring out how they could use the other person and how the other person could use them. Often, the characters lie their way into success and out of sticky situations, and when they're finally honest with someone else, they get burned in the end. The culture of Shanghai seems to compel them to act this way, and the characters fail hard before they learn from their mistakes and move on to find true happiness.

The plot may appear cliched, but the different setting and culture gives the story a freshness that it may not have in a Western setting. Setting is important in this story, as well, and it is richly depicted in the prose description and characters' colored points of view. However, the women characters became engaged in stereotypically feminine behaviors that does not occur likewise for the male characters and I can't help but cry bias. I got tired of Phoebe's relentless pursuit of men, when I wasn't all that clear on what it was that she really wanted, and Yinghui's growing interest in dating made me sigh and roll my eyes occasionally. Other than that, however, the narrative hardly annoyed me.

Overall, this story is an engrossing portrait of the capitalist dream in Shanghai, which will chew you up and spit you out just like in pretty much every major city in the world. You may be able to save face, but only if it's not too late. Four out of five stars.

Aimee Bender's "The Color Master:" a Three-Part Review, Part Three

The third and final section of this underwhelming collection was...maybe not the best, but I enjoyed every story in this section, up until the very end. It seems that the theme of this collection is primarily unsatisfying endings that make no sense.

I really enjoyed the story "Wordkeepers," a kind of fabulist tale of modern-day distraction, even if the narrator was exasperating. I identified more with his love interest, who insisted upon correct grammar and complete sentences, fighting back against this new realm of easy forgetfulness, but the subject matter was topical and the ending was actually satisfying in its own way--a rarity in this collection.

The next story was the title story and the star of the collection, "The Color Master," was indeed one of the best stories in this collection. The setting was odd, as it was at once fairy-tale and modern-day Europe (a fantastic facsimile, more like) and there wasn't much world-building--not that I would expect any from a literary short story. But the process of choosing colors (as the Color Master did) and the vivid descriptions of color, as well as a well-threaded fairy tale plot in which the protagonist grows into her own and the kingdom is saved, were all expertly woven and a delight to immerse myself in. The final line, though, left me going "huh?", because even though I figured the story of "Donkeyskin" referred to the deposed king, why is the story "hers"--i.e. the Color Master's? Because she knew what was happening all along? Or is the Color Master the "her"? Once again I found the ending needlessly confusing whereas throughout the rest of the story I had been able to follow along and pick up the thematics pretty well. So either I'm not "getting it" or it's just plain nonsense.

The third story, "A State of Variance," was not particularly memorable, a story of a legacy of freakish symmetry and finding love and happiness in the opposite. In a way, though, the story starts out one way--a woman who can no longer sleep for more than an hour and thusly experiences dream states while awake--and then turns into the story about a too-symmetrical young man's hangups and his dealings thereof. Interestingly, she didn't get too much into the boy's dad, and the trend of not naming characters continues.

The fourth story, "Americca," was one of the more interesting ones, and contained plenty of echoes of Lemon Cake: an ordinary family encounters some extraordinary small occurences. But unlike in Lemon Cake, the inexplicable giving mysteriously stops after a while, and happens only once more. One of the most difficult things to pull off in a short story is the flash forward--in this story it would be revealing whose voice it was all along--and this story is not an example of such a device being well-done. The voice was not quite that of an adult (in fact she's a child for most of the story) but all of a sudden she is 27 and crying over some delicious curry, presumably because it was the last gift and it will never be given again? Didn't work for me. I'm not a fan of the title, either. Otherwise, though, Bender's usual talent was on form.

The final story in the collection, "The Devourings," stood out in that it's a very fairy tale type story. For one, it has ogres and honest-to-God magic in it. This is also one of the top five best stories in this collection. From the single narrative of a woman in love with an ogre springs forth two narratives related to devouring, and like the concluding events of the story, neatly wraps in on itself. It's a nicely put together, if strange, story that lends itself more to the Brothers Grimm school of fairy tales than it does to what most people are familiar with. (Then again, most people won't be reading this book)

In the end, the collection had mostly okay stories, and some good ones, as well as a few bad ones. I did not enjoy this collection as much as her first, and I'm starting to think Bender is getting too comfortable with a certain formula. It seems that even experienced writers forget that the formula doesn't always work, and you got to mix it up a little bit to keep your stories fresh and prevent writers' atrophy. I give it 2.5 stars out of five.