This is an appealing story.

One day, a hermit brother about to leave for town went to a brother who lived nearby and who had continual compunction. He said to his fervent neighbor, "Please do me the kindness, brother, of taking care of my garden until my return." The other replied, "Believe me, brother, I will do my best not to neglect it." After the brother's departure, he said to himself, Now take care of this garden. And from evening until dawn he stood in psalmody, ceaselessly shedding tears. He prayed the same way for the entire day. Coming home late, the brother found that hedgehogs had ravaged his garden.

Neat, right? Clever without making it known that was the sole intent, compact without being hollow, funny without being a punchline only. Here's the problem: that's only half of the story. I won't paste the rest in here; it's just a further conversation between the two brothers that serves to clarify the above in ways equally annoying and flat, but it serves to exemplify my problem with this charming and inconsequential book. The doodles are completely random, loosely tied to the titular theme, but more often just random observations that she jotted down in the spur of the moment. Even in this minuscule form, stories do not seek to end in meaningful ways; they stop when the thought process stops, regardless of whether that is before or after the scenes demand. It's like a film where every shot is prettily composed, but the editor never keys into a cohesive rhythm, and scenes linger or end abruptly for no reason. If there is one truly interesting tether through the work, it is the way she characterises God when he appears as a character. The Lord is bemused, passive, and genuinely enthusiastic for a world that has completely escaped his grasp. Otherwise, this is just taking a shotgun to a dartboard: a couple of bullseyes and a big mess to clean up afterwards. The single sentence stories are, and this is definitely my prejudice showing, categorically useless.

I read this particular book because I saw it positively compared to Lydia Davis' (in my opinion, also take-it-or-leave-it) work on an even nerdier literature forum than this one. The one where people are actively debating who they think is going to win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. In May. Anyway, to whoever that was, I don't see it. Sorry. Maybe her novels are better. My money's still on Anne Carson.