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Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
The first major book from a longtime legend in underground literature; known by citation and word of mouth, but only now emerging with a work that will earn a broad audience.
“Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts is why I want to read. There are few books at all that expand the exploration of family, outsider sex, animal love, therapy and surreal vision and even fewer writers who do it as well as Claire Donato. My mind and heart are thankfully changed forever.”
—JAMIE STEWART of Xiu Xiu and author of Anything That Moves
“Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts moves and feels like a novel of ideas, yes, but also a lookbook of Rorshachs; a concept cookbook for famished phantoms; a fragmentary tour de force a la Duras. On every page, it lines the mind with vibrant space, as extraordinary in its candor about desire, artifice, and intimacy as it is with wordplay, wit, and social theory. “Death is a mirror of time, and life is not as heavy as it seems,” Donato writes, beckoning us forward through the void of realism as might an imaginary friend we thought we’d lost—or should I say ‘guardian angel’?”
—BLAKE BUTLER, author
"In Claire Donato's fiction, I am both looking in and being looked at. The depths of desire are on display, laying bare the complexity and the ugliness that often comes with it."
—MOLLY SODA, artist
"Claire Donato's prose is at once playful and masterful, charming and haunting—I loved these short stories with huge imaginations."
—CHELSEA HODSON, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else
"Love is a source of radical questioning whose only enemy is indifference. Claire Donato’s fever dream of a novel goes toe to toe with today’s anomie, stretching our only resource left, language, so we can navigate a 21st century landscape of violently changing relationships, with one another, with the natural world, and with our bodies."
—JAMIESON WEBSTER, psychoanalyst and author
In the disquieting stories of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, a fractaled Claire Donato contemplates grief and disgust in heterosexuality, deconstructing the romance myth and the illicit fantasies which reflect our haunted selves. These fictions are populated with Lynchian characters, draped in memory and the subconscious mind, who imagine their way out of the painful limits of their a turtle retreats into its shell and becomes a real girl. A porn addict turns into a baby boy in the arms of his barren cyber-girlfriend. And a digitally-marred depressive joins forces with the ghost of Simone Weil to kill a chicken.
Donato’s fictions are precise and cutting, seamlessly integrating a vast knowledge of art through sharp criticism and a history of cult Donnie Darko, Wings of Desire, Daisies, and Twin Peaks and artists including Clarice Lispector, M.F.K. Fisher, Sibylle Baier, and The Velvet Underground.
Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts concludes with "Gravity and Grace, the Chicken and the Egg, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian", a novella-in-vignettes that frames cooking as an entrypoint to light, awareness, and connection. With associative lyricism and a preternatural ability to gaze into the void with tenderness, Donato relays an indescribably strange perception of our world, in which maniacal grief turns to a gleeful protest before becoming, against all odds, a love letter to what remains.
Cover
Jimmy DeSana
Contact Paper, 1980
Vintage C-print
© the Jimmy DeSana Trust
Courtesy of the Jimmy DeSana Trust and P·P·O·W, New York
“Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts is why I want to read. There are few books at all that expand the exploration of family, outsider sex, animal love, therapy and surreal vision and even fewer writers who do it as well as Claire Donato. My mind and heart are thankfully changed forever.”
—JAMIE STEWART of Xiu Xiu and author of Anything That Moves
“Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts moves and feels like a novel of ideas, yes, but also a lookbook of Rorshachs; a concept cookbook for famished phantoms; a fragmentary tour de force a la Duras. On every page, it lines the mind with vibrant space, as extraordinary in its candor about desire, artifice, and intimacy as it is with wordplay, wit, and social theory. “Death is a mirror of time, and life is not as heavy as it seems,” Donato writes, beckoning us forward through the void of realism as might an imaginary friend we thought we’d lost—or should I say ‘guardian angel’?”
—BLAKE BUTLER, author
"In Claire Donato's fiction, I am both looking in and being looked at. The depths of desire are on display, laying bare the complexity and the ugliness that often comes with it."
—MOLLY SODA, artist
"Claire Donato's prose is at once playful and masterful, charming and haunting—I loved these short stories with huge imaginations."
—CHELSEA HODSON, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else
"Love is a source of radical questioning whose only enemy is indifference. Claire Donato’s fever dream of a novel goes toe to toe with today’s anomie, stretching our only resource left, language, so we can navigate a 21st century landscape of violently changing relationships, with one another, with the natural world, and with our bodies."
—JAMIESON WEBSTER, psychoanalyst and author
In the disquieting stories of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, a fractaled Claire Donato contemplates grief and disgust in heterosexuality, deconstructing the romance myth and the illicit fantasies which reflect our haunted selves. These fictions are populated with Lynchian characters, draped in memory and the subconscious mind, who imagine their way out of the painful limits of their a turtle retreats into its shell and becomes a real girl. A porn addict turns into a baby boy in the arms of his barren cyber-girlfriend. And a digitally-marred depressive joins forces with the ghost of Simone Weil to kill a chicken.
Donato’s fictions are precise and cutting, seamlessly integrating a vast knowledge of art through sharp criticism and a history of cult Donnie Darko, Wings of Desire, Daisies, and Twin Peaks and artists including Clarice Lispector, M.F.K. Fisher, Sibylle Baier, and The Velvet Underground.
Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts concludes with "Gravity and Grace, the Chicken and the Egg, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian", a novella-in-vignettes that frames cooking as an entrypoint to light, awareness, and connection. With associative lyricism and a preternatural ability to gaze into the void with tenderness, Donato relays an indescribably strange perception of our world, in which maniacal grief turns to a gleeful protest before becoming, against all odds, a love letter to what remains.
Cover
Jimmy DeSana
Contact Paper, 1980
Vintage C-print
© the Jimmy DeSana Trust
Courtesy of the Jimmy DeSana Trust and P·P·O·W, New York
250 pages, Paperback
Published November 7, 2023
About the author
Claire Donato
6 books54 followersClaire Donato is most recently the author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts (2023), a collection of short fictions. Her previous titles include Burial (2013), a fiction novella, and The Second Body (2016), a full-length collection of poems. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, and recent writing has appeared in Parapraxis, Forever, The End, The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, The Chicago Review, BOMB, Blue Arrangements, and GoldFlakePaint. She also contributed an introduction to The One on Earth: Selected Works of Mark Baumer. In addition to writing books, Claire makes music, illustrates, and has a 35mm photography practice. Currently, she works as Assistant Chairperson of Writing at Pratt Institute, where she received the 2020-2021 Distinguished Teacher Award, and is a candidate at Pulsion: The International Institute of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychosomatics. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat Woebegone.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
December 24, 2023
Intricate, tender, brimming with ideas, full of grief; the most stimulating book I've read all year
April 13, 2024
Suffers from “too clever for its own good” at points, but has some moments
May 5, 2024
Something about the style was addictive
July 15, 2026
"we are not free from suffering, but we are moving toward light. in an unexpected swerve away from the macabre, i am thinking now about moving toward light not only as an ethical responsibility to oneself, but to others, and to sustainable reserves of love and anger - which is to say, the world."
belated christmas present from shae!!! and a 5 star read for me! i almost feel too dumb to review this book because it is so esoteric and cerebral that i'm going to find it hard to make meaningful analysis about it.
i have never read a book like this before. the prose style was in ways, clinical but extremely moving and visceral. i feel seen by a handful of inner monologues from the main character in the book, especially ones to do with dissecting how others might perceive you. but there was also a lot i didn't quite relate to which isn't a bad thing, but i would posit is actually a good thing hahaha.
the book is composed of a bunch of vignettes/short stories, with a little novella at the back. i loved so many of the short stories, and i loved when they were weird. i thought the book was very sure in what it was, in terms of it's wandering, stemming prose. (virginita woolf-like i woudl say) it feels like the author (like me) is someone who has lots of thoughts that trail into one another, thereby creating a vein system of ideas. i loved this chaos.
in here there are meditations on grief, sex, and ones body. but there are also parts that go into our psyche and that weird stagnant loneliness that came with the pandemic. it puts claire as a person who is transient and in between stages of what she wants. she seems to be unsure of herself a lot in this book but also knows somehow exactly what she wants. there seems to be an underlying sort of mental illness here, but also someone who is at home in these thoughts and doesn't necessarily seek to banish them for appearing.
a lot in here about one's place in the universe, and becoming something that is outside yourself. there are also a lot of descriptions about floating outside your body and viewing it as an omnipotent being who nourishes and grows you. i really liked these parts. i am someone that is never at home in her body and the whole idea of it makes me feel uncomfortable. not from a gender way - i more mean that i was taught growing up that my body should look a certain way (slim) and post leaving home i have had to do a LOT of remedy-ing for this mindset. when i went on antidepressants in 2021 i gained about 30 kgs in 4 months - and i don't even really know how i did that still to this day. i used to think that the worst thing in the world was to be over 60kgs and there are days i still lose that inner battle and feel ashamed that i could let that happen to myself. this all feels too deep to put into a goodreads review but i'm fairly sure i'm the only one who reads the whole of these anyway. i am not on antidepressants anymore (maybe i should be, sometimes i think i should be) but (not that she even goes into this in the book, but art is like that! it makes you draw comparisons to your own life and you see things in art that are unique to you) reading a lot of the stuff about what are bodies are to us was really good for me and healing in a way. slight digression here but what can you do hahaha.
anyway, i highlighted so much of this book in order to come back and muse on. it was even hard just picking quotes to bookend this review. i was nervous that i'd struggle to read this novel because like i said earlier it's kinda weird and highbrow (but in the best way), but in the end i couldn't do anything but devour it. i feel so lucky that books like this exist and break boundaries on what novels even are. this was interesting, refreshing and new and i loved it! thank you shae!
"if she forgives, she is an apologist; if she doesn’t, she is forever a hen. the tension between these ways of being in the world is directed both vertically and horizontally, and it remains unclear which direction to choose."
actually fuck it, im going to put another quote at the end because why the hell not.
"worship did not feel like worship at all. rather, it felt like sitting in silence and recounting faces in her mind of everyone she’s ever loved. so too did it feel like gazing at a single sunflower, which existed in a vase in the centre of a wooden table at adjacent to a pew. this sunflower appeared to be singing or screaming. it was not weeping, for the sunflower did not yet know the gravity of the world."
belated christmas present from shae!!! and a 5 star read for me! i almost feel too dumb to review this book because it is so esoteric and cerebral that i'm going to find it hard to make meaningful analysis about it.
i have never read a book like this before. the prose style was in ways, clinical but extremely moving and visceral. i feel seen by a handful of inner monologues from the main character in the book, especially ones to do with dissecting how others might perceive you. but there was also a lot i didn't quite relate to which isn't a bad thing, but i would posit is actually a good thing hahaha.
the book is composed of a bunch of vignettes/short stories, with a little novella at the back. i loved so many of the short stories, and i loved when they were weird. i thought the book was very sure in what it was, in terms of it's wandering, stemming prose. (virginita woolf-like i woudl say) it feels like the author (like me) is someone who has lots of thoughts that trail into one another, thereby creating a vein system of ideas. i loved this chaos.
in here there are meditations on grief, sex, and ones body. but there are also parts that go into our psyche and that weird stagnant loneliness that came with the pandemic. it puts claire as a person who is transient and in between stages of what she wants. she seems to be unsure of herself a lot in this book but also knows somehow exactly what she wants. there seems to be an underlying sort of mental illness here, but also someone who is at home in these thoughts and doesn't necessarily seek to banish them for appearing.
a lot in here about one's place in the universe, and becoming something that is outside yourself. there are also a lot of descriptions about floating outside your body and viewing it as an omnipotent being who nourishes and grows you. i really liked these parts. i am someone that is never at home in her body and the whole idea of it makes me feel uncomfortable. not from a gender way - i more mean that i was taught growing up that my body should look a certain way (slim) and post leaving home i have had to do a LOT of remedy-ing for this mindset. when i went on antidepressants in 2021 i gained about 30 kgs in 4 months - and i don't even really know how i did that still to this day. i used to think that the worst thing in the world was to be over 60kgs and there are days i still lose that inner battle and feel ashamed that i could let that happen to myself. this all feels too deep to put into a goodreads review but i'm fairly sure i'm the only one who reads the whole of these anyway. i am not on antidepressants anymore (maybe i should be, sometimes i think i should be) but (not that she even goes into this in the book, but art is like that! it makes you draw comparisons to your own life and you see things in art that are unique to you) reading a lot of the stuff about what are bodies are to us was really good for me and healing in a way. slight digression here but what can you do hahaha.
anyway, i highlighted so much of this book in order to come back and muse on. it was even hard just picking quotes to bookend this review. i was nervous that i'd struggle to read this novel because like i said earlier it's kinda weird and highbrow (but in the best way), but in the end i couldn't do anything but devour it. i feel so lucky that books like this exist and break boundaries on what novels even are. this was interesting, refreshing and new and i loved it! thank you shae!
"if she forgives, she is an apologist; if she doesn’t, she is forever a hen. the tension between these ways of being in the world is directed both vertically and horizontally, and it remains unclear which direction to choose."
actually fuck it, im going to put another quote at the end because why the hell not.
"worship did not feel like worship at all. rather, it felt like sitting in silence and recounting faces in her mind of everyone she’s ever loved. so too did it feel like gazing at a single sunflower, which existed in a vase in the centre of a wooden table at adjacent to a pew. this sunflower appeared to be singing or screaming. it was not weeping, for the sunflower did not yet know the gravity of the world."
April 14, 2024
"In the end, the egg---like love---cannot possibly exist. But, like love, it does, possessing nothing."
3.25 deep thoughts in the kitchen stars
Donato is heavily influenced by some of the best lit fic writers. Some of her thoughts really worked for me while others felt a little too forced. Overall I very much enjoyed the concept of the book and her writing style. I will certainly pick up whatever she writes next!
3.25 deep thoughts in the kitchen stars
Donato is heavily influenced by some of the best lit fic writers. Some of her thoughts really worked for me while others felt a little too forced. Overall I very much enjoyed the concept of the book and her writing style. I will certainly pick up whatever she writes next!
December 27, 2023
Oh Claire! You are a kindred spirit genius! I only skimmed a couple paragraphs when u were too smart for me…
More ought to be written on the value of detailed food descriptions in literature.
More ought to be written on the value of detailed food descriptions in literature.
April 28, 2025
'In other words, if I remain inattentive to my desire- if I avoid it in lieu of watching it, let it grow legs, let it learn to walk on its own, and notice how it walks, where it goes, why it wobbles there, and follow it without judgement or the pretense of an anxious helicopter- will it transmute into breath that knows more than I, and will in turn come to understand its spores as valentines written to me, granted I am terrified of them, granted they know more than I know?’
May 7, 2025
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
September 2, 20242.5
Fictional mini essays about random crap.
I liked the mixed media in it but I just didn’t get it.
Random sentence:
“ there are bones around which I desire to wrap these words, as if language is a bandage.”
Fictional mini essays about random crap.
I liked the mixed media in it but I just didn’t get it.
Random sentence:
“ there are bones around which I desire to wrap these words, as if language is a bandage.”
March 9, 2024
I could say so much about this but instead I’m just going to pull one of my favourite quotes:
“olive oil (still a virgin)”
“olive oil (still a virgin)”
December 7, 2024
2.5/5
insanely cool writing.
too cool for me to actually enjoy it, i fear
insanely cool writing.
too cool for me to actually enjoy it, i fear
August 11, 2026
Didn’t know that alphabets could be poems or that ASCII art could be a part of literary fiction.
What even is first, second, and third person when you can have all or none?
Time to make some salad with kale (bunched in rubber band) and kiwi (flightless bird).
What even is first, second, and third person when you can have all or none?
Time to make some salad with kale (bunched in rubber band) and kiwi (flightless bird).
October 1, 2026
Impressively insufferable. Eloquently embarrassing. Masterfully masturbatory. Nauseatingly narcissistic. Unbearably uninteresting. Uncomfortably unhinged.
January 5, 2026
“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken.”
Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts is an intimate and engrossing collection of prose and poetry. At times humorous, shocking, dream-like and surreal; pulsating with love, curiosity and reflection. By chance, I had just finished Near to the Wild Heart and Água Viva by Clarice Lispector, a writer who is not only summoned by name, but whose presence and influence are felt throughout. This is a gift, and it sets the tone for the explorations that follow. Donato weaves inspiration from many facets of the world and human creation, musing philosophically and existentially upon experiences and language; upon sex, family, love, death, sadness, connection—and hunger.
Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts is an intimate and engrossing collection of prose and poetry. At times humorous, shocking, dream-like and surreal; pulsating with love, curiosity and reflection. By chance, I had just finished Near to the Wild Heart and Água Viva by Clarice Lispector, a writer who is not only summoned by name, but whose presence and influence are felt throughout. This is a gift, and it sets the tone for the explorations that follow. Donato weaves inspiration from many facets of the world and human creation, musing philosophically and existentially upon experiences and language; upon sex, family, love, death, sadness, connection—and hunger.
December 9, 2024
3.5. Started strong and thought it was going to be an easy 5 star read, but the second half really lost me.
March 23, 2025
we stan Claire in this house!!! so great and inspiring and funny and true
February 15, 2026
The culinary section of the book was a stroke of pure genius
January 9, 2025
This book has plenty of good feelings, whether it’s the cult, cultural references of Sibylle Baier, Daisies or Simone Weil, or the passages of recipe-adjacent writing, Claire Donato is able to move through daily life and interior spaces in a sort of alien way. Would recommend if you like ghosts, recipes, 00s blog era writing, gratuitously descriptive food related language, emoticons and criterion movies.
5/5 I don’t remember what I rated it but I’m editing stuff rn
5/5 I don’t remember what I rated it but I’m editing stuff rn
February 9, 2025
3.75/5
felt like a bizarre dream i would have when i grapple with sleep and sleep takes too long to win.
felt like a bizarre dream i would have when i grapple with sleep and sleep takes too long to win.
March 25, 2025
I just don’t know what she was trying to say
July 21, 2025
- As she takes the last sip [amen], there is a period of inertia.
- Excluding love, the list of her desires is as follows: fog, the ocean, a laptop computer, a vegetable garden, a brood of backyard chickens, a bonsai tree, bunk beds, a bicycle, to communicate with clarity and intention, to be scratched on a bench in a cemetery, to better understand the incongruences between people that punctuate everyday life, and a hug. [This does not make an honorable exception of love.] If she waits long enough, these desires float away into the imagination that fills the void, where she could go on breaking yolks - attaching her desires to concepts and objects - thereby murdering them
- This is her worst fault ... to speculate the future as it haunts the present
- Alongside it, she desires to sleep as dust, to erect a door inside her mind that opens toward a body of water whose waves ebb and flow in a state of temporary calm: a cloud of tiredness, an ethereal tiredness, a peaceful lacuna that holds her together and binds here with another in waking life and in sleep, then.
- In the ocean - your sole interlocutor - you stand. You seethe. You punch its waves. Its temperature is hot, and the conversation taking place between you is a fistfight with hands.
- This is her worst quality: to imagine fury contains an object when it is, in fact, a sensation that attaches itself to something.
- We are not free from suffering, but we are moving toward light. In an unexpected swerve away from the macabre, I am thinking now about moving toward light not only as an ethical responsibility to oneself, but to others, and to sustainable reserves of love and anger - which is to say, the world.
- My disclosures do not mean I lack boundaries. Quite the opposite. They are declarations indicating how my boundaries are so set they are, in fact, open - so radically open: open to the world and to possibility, to self-exploration and a deeper sense of the abyss.
- I feel your memory, which is not only a keen recollection, but also a mirror ... You articulate the world in a precise synthesis of image and affect, yielding a lyricism so deeply articulated that I cannot help but remember you past as if I exist inside it.
- I feel a lack. Lacan says the lack always relates to desire. One lack takes up another lack - the real, earlier lack, and the two lacks become desire. I am thinking now of how to articulate emotion as it occurs in the transference. Sometimes I think of the word ambivalence, but I keep returning to love. Is is possible we free ourselves from one another?
- Excluding love, the list of her desires is as follows: fog, the ocean, a laptop computer, a vegetable garden, a brood of backyard chickens, a bonsai tree, bunk beds, a bicycle, to communicate with clarity and intention, to be scratched on a bench in a cemetery, to better understand the incongruences between people that punctuate everyday life, and a hug. [This does not make an honorable exception of love.] If she waits long enough, these desires float away into the imagination that fills the void, where she could go on breaking yolks - attaching her desires to concepts and objects - thereby murdering them
- This is her worst fault ... to speculate the future as it haunts the present
- Alongside it, she desires to sleep as dust, to erect a door inside her mind that opens toward a body of water whose waves ebb and flow in a state of temporary calm: a cloud of tiredness, an ethereal tiredness, a peaceful lacuna that holds her together and binds here with another in waking life and in sleep, then.
- In the ocean - your sole interlocutor - you stand. You seethe. You punch its waves. Its temperature is hot, and the conversation taking place between you is a fistfight with hands.
- This is her worst quality: to imagine fury contains an object when it is, in fact, a sensation that attaches itself to something.
- We are not free from suffering, but we are moving toward light. In an unexpected swerve away from the macabre, I am thinking now about moving toward light not only as an ethical responsibility to oneself, but to others, and to sustainable reserves of love and anger - which is to say, the world.
- My disclosures do not mean I lack boundaries. Quite the opposite. They are declarations indicating how my boundaries are so set they are, in fact, open - so radically open: open to the world and to possibility, to self-exploration and a deeper sense of the abyss.
- I feel your memory, which is not only a keen recollection, but also a mirror ... You articulate the world in a precise synthesis of image and affect, yielding a lyricism so deeply articulated that I cannot help but remember you past as if I exist inside it.
- I feel a lack. Lacan says the lack always relates to desire. One lack takes up another lack - the real, earlier lack, and the two lacks become desire. I am thinking now of how to articulate emotion as it occurs in the transference. Sometimes I think of the word ambivalence, but I keep returning to love. Is is possible we free ourselves from one another?
August 22, 2023
Totally bowled over by this. Read a review of Donato's work recently that compared her to Lispector (thanks, Mack!) but think this wades into some uncharted territory. She is of French origin, which makes sense considering the hints of Duras and Sarraute in this one. But also, couldn't help but recall reading THE GUEST by Emma Cline (my anti-beach read, haha) since they share an innate mysteriousness and compulsive readability. Love the ASCII art included within— I thought that was great! And thought the reflections on the ACT UP movement were powerful. Not everyday you write those two sentences about the same book, but I don't really think this is an everyday kind of read. It's more suited for the night, which is when I read it mostly. Thank you Archway for the ARC!
January 21, 2024
Meh. A collection of stories and a novella. Most of the stories follow similar patterns-- some intense self-exploration, some psychoanalysis, some men and drinks, maybe. I should be ashamed to admit this in 2024, but I've never read autofiction, and maybe this is that? But for me, while the probe of the self was sincere, the language itself was rarely engaging.
The novella, framed in some ways about making instagrammable food during the pandemic, was better, if more repetitive. It used that repetition to at least feel like it was digging deeper, and the added style of writing recipes/ food writing elevated some of what was there, though it didn't, for me, go anyplace particularly revealing.
The novella, framed in some ways about making instagrammable food during the pandemic, was better, if more repetitive. It used that repetition to at least feel like it was digging deeper, and the added style of writing recipes/ food writing elevated some of what was there, though it didn't, for me, go anyplace particularly revealing.
December 2, 2023
got this from bookshop's holiday sale. am a huge fan of xiu xiu and jamie stewart and couldn't not order a copy when i saw he blurbed. and i do gotta say -- there's some level where this feels like the xiu xiu of books. totally debased sometimes, but with a real musicality and heart underlying it, and always willing to experiment and take risks. donnie darko really stood out to me. would suggest this if you're looking for something contemporary, out there, but also deeply human. i'd go for this
February 5, 2025
3.5 Stars
I absolutely adore the writing style, but my enthusiasm for the book has dwindled - it takes a lot of concentration to muddle your way through the beautifully strung together words, and realize that they mean very little. They have a lovely rhythm to them and gives excellent shape to the narrator's personality but (and maybe it just that it's beyond my understanding) the stories do not have anything but a sense of whimsy and eccentric chatter holding them together
I absolutely adore the writing style, but my enthusiasm for the book has dwindled - it takes a lot of concentration to muddle your way through the beautifully strung together words, and realize that they mean very little. They have a lovely rhythm to them and gives excellent shape to the narrator's personality but (and maybe it just that it's beyond my understanding) the stories do not have anything but a sense of whimsy and eccentric chatter holding them together
July 14, 2026
Interesting (most of it), poignant (some of it), obnoxious (a lot of it).
I picked this up from a used book store in Brooklyn and decided to buy it because she mentioned Clarice Lispector. I think Donato is a clever writer and I felt smart and cultured because I got a lot of the references, but overall I felt that it wasn’t as cohesive or coherent as one could hope and was a bit try hard at times. Or maybe it’s just that I struggle to enjoy a lot of contemporary and more experimental authors.
I picked this up from a used book store in Brooklyn and decided to buy it because she mentioned Clarice Lispector. I think Donato is a clever writer and I felt smart and cultured because I got a lot of the references, but overall I felt that it wasn’t as cohesive or coherent as one could hope and was a bit try hard at times. Or maybe it’s just that I struggle to enjoy a lot of contemporary and more experimental authors.
March 24, 2024
I had to opportunity to meet Claire at the Roxy Cinema in NY. She signed my book (just picked it up at Strand) and we chatted about photography for a few minutes before the screening. I really didn’t know what I was in for with this book. Her voice within is so unique - I truly don’t know who or what else to compare it too. Very readable very cool, want to hear more
July 7, 2024
3.68 stars, actually. i will say a few things about this:
1) reading this was like my watching i saw the tv glow- mostly enjoyable but utterly confusing. maybe like that movie, i didn’t get it because it wasn’t meant for me
2) this book was like my adjacency to poly queers- close but no cigar
3) people are really enamored by sex and writing about it
1) reading this was like my watching i saw the tv glow- mostly enjoyable but utterly confusing. maybe like that movie, i didn’t get it because it wasn’t meant for me
2) this book was like my adjacency to poly queers- close but no cigar
3) people are really enamored by sex and writing about it
March 3, 2025
2.5 — started off very strong. i loved the very first vignette, however, not sure if i enjoyed the second that followed. i thought “colour green” was beautiful—one of my favorite pieces of writing. and i do actually love the sibylle baier album she mentions. however, what follows doesn’t exactly grip my attention. was really hoping to like this but maybe i’ll try it again another time.
July 26, 2026
i read this very slowly story by story. i was enthralled by the first half. the second half “gravity and grace, the chicken and the egg, or: how to cook everything vegetarian” got a little repetitive and actually caused me to stall on finishing for quite a while. however by the last few stories i was back into it
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews