The book metadata isn’t available for this, which figures as it was just published by a small indie press. Regardless, Meaghan Garvey (best known for her work with Pitchfork) has for a long time been a favorite writer of mine. She’s the only present-day Pitchfork reviewer whose opinions I trust. This book is rife with post-pandemic paranoia, framed against the inherent eerieness and—dare I say Lynchian (Garvey references David Lynch a handful of times throughout the book)—qualities of the deep woods of the Upper Midwest. I appreciate when post-Obama media, particularly books and films, can comment on the spiritual malaise and absurdity of our world at present without falling back on the omnipresence of technology and/or social media to illustrate it for them; here, the online is scarcely mentioned (she was mostly in places that didn’t have cell service lol) and the terminally-online sickness is conveyed directly through descriptions of the backwoods oddballs she encounters who live amongst such natural beauty that’s been ravaged by opioids, meth, Fox News-brand hysteria, et cetera. Pockets of the fabric of reality tearing apart at the seams. Really loved it and will be returning to it in the future for sure.
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