This book seems to be mostly about abuse, often violent, inflicted by men against women. Its depictions are brief, detached, yet powerful. They speak from the victims’ perspectives in a tone that evokes quiet despair, adaptive dissociation, and steely resilience. Protagonists endure brutality and survive it at the cost of deep internal fragmentation. There seems to be no heartening message or moral of sort, just the observation that unchecked narcissism and cruelty abound in men of our world and that the victims however scarred and burdened they may be carry on as the version of themselves that remains alive.

I suppose all of the above serves in no way as a useful recommendation. But I should say that not all stories in this book deal with brutality and abuse, and even those that do have more things than shock and sorrow to offer. Foremost is Scanlan’s unique yet accessible prose, which she assiduously pruned, tuned, and polished into remarkable little language contraptions.

As described in the New Yorker:

In all her books, Scanlan writes about ordinary life in extraordinary ways by compacting it radically, like pressurizing carbon into diamonds.

Scanlan continued this practice in novel form with Kick the Latch, which came out two years later in 2022. For me, she is one of the most exciting prose writers working today.