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Everything Happens as It Does
Albena Stambolova’s idiosyncratic debut novel, Everything Happens as It Does, builds from the idea that, as the title suggests, everything happens exactly the way it must. In this case, the seven characters of the novel—from Boris, a young boy who is only at peace when he’s around bees, to Philip and Maria and their twins—each play a specific role in the lives of the others, binding them all together into a strange, yet logical, knot. As characters are picked up, explored, and then swept aside, the novel’s beguiling structure becomes apparent, forcing the reader to pay attention to the patterns created by this accumulation of events and relationships. This is not a novel of reaching moral high ground; this is not a book about resolving relationships; this is a story whose mysteries are mysteries for a reason.
Written with a precise, succinct tone that calls to mind Camus’s The Stranger, Everything Happens as It Does is a captivating and detail-driven novel that explores how depth will never be as immediately accessible as superficiality, and how everything will run its course in the precise manner it was always meant to.
Written with a precise, succinct tone that calls to mind Camus’s The Stranger, Everything Happens as It Does is a captivating and detail-driven novel that explores how depth will never be as immediately accessible as superficiality, and how everything will run its course in the precise manner it was always meant to.
110 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
535 people want to read
About the author
Albena Stambolova
13 books5 followersAlbena Stambolova (aka: Албена Стамболова) graduated in French philology from the Sofia University. She has worked as an editor and translator and also writes in the field of literary and social criticism, foreign literature reception and psychoanalysis.
Between 1990-1999, she lived in Paris, where she earned an MA in psychology and defended a dissertation focused on semiotics and psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VII Jussieu. She also worked and taught at the University of Paris ІX Dauphine, as well as the University of Paris ІІІ Censier.
For the last few years, she has lived in Bulgaria, where she works as a psychological and organizational consultant. She has also maintained a practice as a psychotherapist.
Albena Stambolova is the author of three novels. Everything Happens As It Does (2002) is her debut novel, which has also been translated into Polish and published in the U.S. by Open Letter Books with the support of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (2013).
It was followed by Hop-Hop the Stars (2003, forthcoming in Polish), and An Adventure, To Pass the Time (2007). She has also published a collection of short stories, Three Dots (1985), and a psychoanalytical study on Marguerite Duras, Sickness in Death (2004). The author of numerous articles and translations, she is now working on a book about fairy tales and a collection of short stories.
Between 1990-1999, she lived in Paris, where she earned an MA in psychology and defended a dissertation focused on semiotics and psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VII Jussieu. She also worked and taught at the University of Paris ІX Dauphine, as well as the University of Paris ІІІ Censier.
For the last few years, she has lived in Bulgaria, where she works as a psychological and organizational consultant. She has also maintained a practice as a psychotherapist.
Albena Stambolova is the author of three novels. Everything Happens As It Does (2002) is her debut novel, which has also been translated into Polish and published in the U.S. by Open Letter Books with the support of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (2013).
It was followed by Hop-Hop the Stars (2003, forthcoming in Polish), and An Adventure, To Pass the Time (2007). She has also published a collection of short stories, Three Dots (1985), and a psychoanalytical study on Marguerite Duras, Sickness in Death (2004). The author of numerous articles and translations, she is now working on a book about fairy tales and a collection of short stories.
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October 21, 2020
How often do we get to read something by a Bulgarian author? And a woman?
We begin with a young boy who’s awkward, friendless and interested only in bees. We get an extended metaphor about bees and hives in nature vs. man-made hives. To go to college he has to live with his older married sister’s family in the city. He imagines the city houses as hives looking like ‘taxidermied animals.’ He gravitates toward computer games where he can construct imaginary digital worlds like hives.
We quickly leave him behind and the story moves on, told through multiple points of view and an omniscient narrator in a kind of staccato style. Many chapters are a single page. A relative of the boy has twins, a boy and a girl. The girl is mentally challenged. She too is into computers and spends the day riding on trams and trains through the city just playing digital games.
There’s some good writing; for example at a character’s mother’s funeral:
“He saw her in a way he had never seen her before. He had always known that his mother was different from everyone else. That the degrees of difference between other people were much smaller than those between her and other people.” And “What was happening now had nothing to do with what had happened to his mother.”
The author has a knack for explaining quirky ways of understanding people. For example, everyone, including his relations, thinks the introverted boy is not just odd but weird and a little bit frightening. However that all goes away when he gets glasses. Suddenly he ‘fits in’ and people understand what he’s about. The same thing with the twins. Once you see then together, each with their ‘half-boy, half-girl face,” you realize they look like elves and you ‘understand’ them. LOL.
A recurring theme can be summarized as “watch what you wish for.” The male twin desperately desires to be part of a ‘real family.’ He marries into a big loving family and gets exactly what he wants, only to be suffocated by it and he ends up divorced. Another man visits his ex- and his young child and is disgusted by the conditions they are living in. (So, help them out…..?)
A lot of the story involves Christmas time where many of the related characters get together. But others are left out such an older divorced man who hangs out alone in bar chatting with the young waitresses.
Wikipedia describes the novel as seven love stories in “which all turn out exactly as intended.” But I found that hard to pick up on in my reading. There are so many characters and confusing relations among them that if I were to read it again, I’d make a genealogical chart to keep them straight. And all these characters are jammed into a very short book (130 pages). Still I found it a good read with decent writing so I’ll give it 4, rounded up from 3.5
The author was born in Bulgaria in 1957, lived and studied in Paris for a decade, and then returned to her home country. She’s a journalist and a psychoanalyst as well as a novelist. She has written a psychoanalytical non-fiction work about the French author Marguerite Duras.
Top photo of Sofia, Bulgaria from businessinsider.com
The author from alchetron.com
We begin with a young boy who’s awkward, friendless and interested only in bees. We get an extended metaphor about bees and hives in nature vs. man-made hives. To go to college he has to live with his older married sister’s family in the city. He imagines the city houses as hives looking like ‘taxidermied animals.’ He gravitates toward computer games where he can construct imaginary digital worlds like hives.
We quickly leave him behind and the story moves on, told through multiple points of view and an omniscient narrator in a kind of staccato style. Many chapters are a single page. A relative of the boy has twins, a boy and a girl. The girl is mentally challenged. She too is into computers and spends the day riding on trams and trains through the city just playing digital games.
There’s some good writing; for example at a character’s mother’s funeral:
“He saw her in a way he had never seen her before. He had always known that his mother was different from everyone else. That the degrees of difference between other people were much smaller than those between her and other people.” And “What was happening now had nothing to do with what had happened to his mother.”
The author has a knack for explaining quirky ways of understanding people. For example, everyone, including his relations, thinks the introverted boy is not just odd but weird and a little bit frightening. However that all goes away when he gets glasses. Suddenly he ‘fits in’ and people understand what he’s about. The same thing with the twins. Once you see then together, each with their ‘half-boy, half-girl face,” you realize they look like elves and you ‘understand’ them. LOL.
A recurring theme can be summarized as “watch what you wish for.” The male twin desperately desires to be part of a ‘real family.’ He marries into a big loving family and gets exactly what he wants, only to be suffocated by it and he ends up divorced. Another man visits his ex- and his young child and is disgusted by the conditions they are living in. (So, help them out…..?)
A lot of the story involves Christmas time where many of the related characters get together. But others are left out such an older divorced man who hangs out alone in bar chatting with the young waitresses.
Wikipedia describes the novel as seven love stories in “which all turn out exactly as intended.” But I found that hard to pick up on in my reading. There are so many characters and confusing relations among them that if I were to read it again, I’d make a genealogical chart to keep them straight. And all these characters are jammed into a very short book (130 pages). Still I found it a good read with decent writing so I’ll give it 4, rounded up from 3.5
The author was born in Bulgaria in 1957, lived and studied in Paris for a decade, and then returned to her home country. She’s a journalist and a psychoanalyst as well as a novelist. She has written a psychoanalytical non-fiction work about the French author Marguerite Duras.
Top photo of Sofia, Bulgaria from businessinsider.com
The author from alchetron.com
September 9, 2013
winner of the 2013 (or 2012, depending on your source) contemporary bulgarian writers contest, everything happens as it does (tova e kakto stava) is albena stambolova's debut novel (originally published in 2002). stambolova, also a practicing psychotherapist, has since gone on to write two additional novels (preceded by a collection of short stories from 1985 and "a psychoanalytical study on marguerite duras"). everything happens as it does begins with a brief prologue indicative of the style, prose, and ambience that follows throughout:
stambolova eschews florid descriptions and sentimentality. her direct, restrained prose, entirely free of dialogue, is never impersonal or tedious - instead veering often into passages of unadulterated beauty, perception, and sagacity. everything happens as it does is a fictional rendering of realism and verity. easy it will be for the reader to recognize the authenticity in stambolova's characters and the frequently cumbrous exchanges and interactions that color so many of our interpersonal relationships.
*translated from the bulgarian by olga nikolova
this story considers itself the story of everyone. i don't know if this is true. you will be the one to decide.stambolova's slim novel features seven main characters (and some ancillary ones) whose lives inevitably intersect in ways acutely representative of those in the real world. these relationships (familial, friendly, or romantic) are marked, like their non-fictional counterparts, by hardship, drama, miscommunication, and unresolved feelings. given stambolova's extra-literary pursuits, it's unsurprising that so much of the narrative insight into the characters' lives are shaded by psychological influences and motivations. her novel, however, is not a family drama or love story gone awry, but, instead, an accurate portrayal of our often messy lives in miniature. heartbreaks, betrayals, indifferences, and unspoken hopes and fears abound.
i myself am certain that all stories are love stories, so i have refrained from classifying it as such.
it is simply the story of women and men who are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, loved ones and friends... or, in a nutshell, of people who are tigers and lions, oranges and lemons.
this story is neither funny, nor sad. it is simply a story that takes place somewhere on the border between the world we know and the world we are no longer very sure about.
stambolova eschews florid descriptions and sentimentality. her direct, restrained prose, entirely free of dialogue, is never impersonal or tedious - instead veering often into passages of unadulterated beauty, perception, and sagacity. everything happens as it does is a fictional rendering of realism and verity. easy it will be for the reader to recognize the authenticity in stambolova's characters and the frequently cumbrous exchanges and interactions that color so many of our interpersonal relationships.
movement and silence hand in hand. intimations of other silences, of other movements, of someone walking next to someone, hovered around them. each bend in the path made him anticipate the next. it was anticipation too brief to invite fear, under the dome of the indefinite woods, dimensionless like a house never visited.
*translated from the bulgarian by olga nikolova
April 22, 2016
[4.5] I liked this a lot, but struggle to describe it in detail. A strange story of an extended family, and the family of one member's lawyer, imbued with a subtle fatalism, delivered in clear, sharp diamond prose. Perhaps - in atmosphere more than exact plot - as if Bergman had directed The Royal Tenenbaums. Anderson for the people and milieu, Ingmar for the precision, seriousness and silences. Either for all the snow and Christmas.
Except for a few names of tram stops and towns, this could be almost anywhere in Europe. (It's Bulgarian.) Albena Stambolova [a name that would attract too many bad puns in English] is a psychologist as well as a writer: whilst there are a few psychology concepts (sans terminological labels) lurking in description and interactions, there's more in the way of metaphysics and metaphors; the characters are not mere case studies; I always felt that these people were far more, and far more ineffable than that, moving in curious orbits around one another like some quantum clockwork system.
Except for a few names of tram stops and towns, this could be almost anywhere in Europe. (It's Bulgarian.) Albena Stambolova [a name that would attract too many bad puns in English] is a psychologist as well as a writer: whilst there are a few psychology concepts (sans terminological labels) lurking in description and interactions, there's more in the way of metaphysics and metaphors; the characters are not mere case studies; I always felt that these people were far more, and far more ineffable than that, moving in curious orbits around one another like some quantum clockwork system.
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July 18, 2018Strange and full-hearted, picking with delicate if unerring precision at the weirdness underneath the seams of reality. (From the prologue: "This story is neither funny, nor sad. It is simply a story that takes place somewhere on the border between the world we know and the world we are no longer very sure about.") I liked it and found some of the descriptions and turns of phrase absolutely stunning. Though I never felt completely in tune with it (in her vignettes, though they're very moving in their layered and slippery way, Stambolova carefully avoids plunging the reader into pure emotional territory), I'll happily pick up the next Stambolova book translated into English.
October 28, 2016
I remember finding this novel quite interesting, vaguely Wes-Andersonesque (says he who has only watched Tenenbaums of that filmmaker's oeuvre--and fell asleep halfway through) and not at all emotionally engaging. A month later, I can remember virtually nothing about the story.
March 25, 2024
looooved i couldn’t put it down. kind of reminded me of george saunders. i just wish there was more! the ending was just okay for me
July 30, 2020
This book has absolutely no plot or consistent storyline. The characters are extremely superficial in the way they are described, which gives them no depth and makes them seem futile and irrelevant even though they’re at the core of the “story”. There is no dialogue at all, which makes this story seem pointless and very boring. There are a couple of beautifully written metaphors and analogies, but that’s it. I regret spending time on this book.
August 31, 2015
"Something enormous had emerged. Something enormous was here and was refusing to leave. No one could remove it."
So is the feeling from reading "Everything Happens as It Does". Albena Strambolova's first novel is thin but wide open. Seven main characters float through a larger story that makes sense as pieces and not as a whole. The best description of this novel would be if you were to go every morning to a local coffee shop and you listen to the gossip of the old timers that gather there to tell the tales of the community. This community story revolves around Maria and those who come in and out of her life, or about Boris and the decisions that he makes or it revolves around Valentin, one of Maria's twins, and how he is trying to get along in the world, or maybe it doesn't revolve around anyone at all but around everyone. This is how gossip always feels; you try to get every little detail of the story, even the details that does seem too relevant to the whole, because you are trying to create the entire picture. The feeling in the end is not one of satisfaction or a complete picture, but there is enough to make the reader think that he can create the rest of the story in his mind, fill in the blanks with his own details, and continue on with the story. That makes for an odd feeling. I want to make up some details, add to the story, even though it is fine without any more story, there are several directions that can continue to be explored. This incompleteness could be off-putting to some readers, those that want a nice neat plot and a nice neat ending. There is nothing nice and neat about any of this story, and for that, and Stambolova's ability to accomplish this, "Everything Happens as It Does" is an interesting and exciting novel. Open Letter should consider translating her other novels.
So is the feeling from reading "Everything Happens as It Does". Albena Strambolova's first novel is thin but wide open. Seven main characters float through a larger story that makes sense as pieces and not as a whole. The best description of this novel would be if you were to go every morning to a local coffee shop and you listen to the gossip of the old timers that gather there to tell the tales of the community. This community story revolves around Maria and those who come in and out of her life, or about Boris and the decisions that he makes or it revolves around Valentin, one of Maria's twins, and how he is trying to get along in the world, or maybe it doesn't revolve around anyone at all but around everyone. This is how gossip always feels; you try to get every little detail of the story, even the details that does seem too relevant to the whole, because you are trying to create the entire picture. The feeling in the end is not one of satisfaction or a complete picture, but there is enough to make the reader think that he can create the rest of the story in his mind, fill in the blanks with his own details, and continue on with the story. That makes for an odd feeling. I want to make up some details, add to the story, even though it is fine without any more story, there are several directions that can continue to be explored. This incompleteness could be off-putting to some readers, those that want a nice neat plot and a nice neat ending. There is nothing nice and neat about any of this story, and for that, and Stambolova's ability to accomplish this, "Everything Happens as It Does" is an interesting and exciting novel. Open Letter should consider translating her other novels.
July 20, 2017
Rarely am I tempted to immediately read back through a book after finishing but so disappointed was I that it finished, that I was not ready to move on. The writer has managed to create not one, but a multitude of in-depth, fascinating and individually-complex characters, some of which are so strange that it was difficult to comprehend why I was so invested in the little fragments of their lives that Stambolova reveals over the course of this short book. There are two things that she does particularly well. The first is not trying to tell the reader anything but rather just show what is. There is no direct dialogue and no lengthy self-analysis on the part of the characters. The second is the novel's structure. It does not get bogged down by having a traditional main character (the character of Maria is what knots the lives of the other characters together yet she is not given undue focus, a good thing as she is incredibly annoying) but rather jumps between different points of view. Sometimes, these can be a series of chapters told from one perspective or at other times, a single chapter devoted to a character. The end result is a satisfying journey for the reader through the everyday of extremely well-written characters, like a high-brow opera.
May 15, 2021
Dit is een zeer existentialistische novelle, bovendien donker existentialistisch, op het negatieve af. Daarom vond ik het al niet erg passend om dit boek in te leiden met een citaat van Ludwig Wittgenstein, één van de grondleggers van het logisch positivisme.
Natuurlijk gebeurt alles zoals het gebeurt, maar dan wel zonder doelgerichtheid. Het is een filosofische kwestie waar heel lang en uitgebreid over gedialogeerd kan worden, maar dat doet dit werk niet.
De personages in het verhaal zijn allemaal blijkbaar op zoek naar "hun plaats", zonder die te vinden... maar ja, is dat niet in zekere zin zo voor iedereen? Naar het einde van het verhaal toe lijkt het erop alsof iedereen zijn/haar plaats vindt, maar toch roept dat einde nog heel wat vragen op.
Al bij al mogen we zeggen dat er nogal wat gaten zitten in dit werk, niettegenstaande de interessante passages en de mooie vragen ter discussie die opgeroepen worden.
Hier zat meer in, veel meer.
Natuurlijk gebeurt alles zoals het gebeurt, maar dan wel zonder doelgerichtheid. Het is een filosofische kwestie waar heel lang en uitgebreid over gedialogeerd kan worden, maar dat doet dit werk niet.
De personages in het verhaal zijn allemaal blijkbaar op zoek naar "hun plaats", zonder die te vinden... maar ja, is dat niet in zekere zin zo voor iedereen? Naar het einde van het verhaal toe lijkt het erop alsof iedereen zijn/haar plaats vindt, maar toch roept dat einde nog heel wat vragen op.
Al bij al mogen we zeggen dat er nogal wat gaten zitten in dit werk, niettegenstaande de interessante passages en de mooie vragen ter discussie die opgeroepen worden.
Hier zat meer in, veel meer.
May 26, 2019
Really interesting novel told from multiple narrators. At first it feels like a connected short story collection. With narrators that are connected to each other with intertwining yet seperate stories. Worth a look.
December 10, 2020
What a strange little book. It's honest but vague. There is a lot of thinking but doesn't pull you in emotionally.
September 8, 2025
This book was meditative and odd. I don’t know if I could explain the story, but I enjoyed the writing and the strangeness of the cast of characters who come in and out of each other’s lives.
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June 9, 2014http://www.full-stop.net/2013/12/12/r...
Review by Helen Stuhr-Rommereim
It is rare for a book to be as aptly titled as Everything Happens as it Does, Bulgarian author Albena Stambolova’s first novel and her only work currently available in English. That everything simply happens “as it does” may seem incontrovertible, but nonetheless it can be a challenging sentiment to accept in the slippery, regret-laden context of lived experience. The assertive simplicity of this difficult premise sets the tone for Stambolova’s brief, tightly written work, in which all circumstances and emotions, beginnings and ends, joys and disasters are presented in unruffled prose as the steady unfolding of history’s inevitability. In Everything Happens as it Does, contingency and determinism go hand in hand: everything is random and we exist at the whim of chance, and yet things can only be the way they are. The stories of a handful of comingling lives unspool with the beguiling sense of fatedness that overtakes all events once they’ve happened the way they’ve happened to happen.
Everything Happens as it Does is written entirely without dialogue, which causes the novel to read like a fable or fairy tale, told from the distance of eternity, not mired in individuals and their details, but rather observing as the smooth wheels of time churn and produce the effects they will produce. But while fable-like in its narrative mode, there is decidedly no central moral or didactic function to this tale. Any given situation is simply offered up as a collection of facts that must be absorbed and accepted. The novel begins to read as an allegory for itself; it is a story about what happens when you pull a narrative out of a life, which is that, simply, you find yourself observing a series of events following one after the other like dominos, with no more of a sense of purpose. That very lack of purpose or didacticism, however, itself conveys a particular perspective on the nature of life.
Read the rest here: http://www.full-stop.net/2013/12/12/r...
Review by Helen Stuhr-Rommereim
It is rare for a book to be as aptly titled as Everything Happens as it Does, Bulgarian author Albena Stambolova’s first novel and her only work currently available in English. That everything simply happens “as it does” may seem incontrovertible, but nonetheless it can be a challenging sentiment to accept in the slippery, regret-laden context of lived experience. The assertive simplicity of this difficult premise sets the tone for Stambolova’s brief, tightly written work, in which all circumstances and emotions, beginnings and ends, joys and disasters are presented in unruffled prose as the steady unfolding of history’s inevitability. In Everything Happens as it Does, contingency and determinism go hand in hand: everything is random and we exist at the whim of chance, and yet things can only be the way they are. The stories of a handful of comingling lives unspool with the beguiling sense of fatedness that overtakes all events once they’ve happened the way they’ve happened to happen.
Everything Happens as it Does is written entirely without dialogue, which causes the novel to read like a fable or fairy tale, told from the distance of eternity, not mired in individuals and their details, but rather observing as the smooth wheels of time churn and produce the effects they will produce. But while fable-like in its narrative mode, there is decidedly no central moral or didactic function to this tale. Any given situation is simply offered up as a collection of facts that must be absorbed and accepted. The novel begins to read as an allegory for itself; it is a story about what happens when you pull a narrative out of a life, which is that, simply, you find yourself observing a series of events following one after the other like dominos, with no more of a sense of purpose. That very lack of purpose or didacticism, however, itself conveys a particular perspective on the nature of life.
Read the rest here: http://www.full-stop.net/2013/12/12/r...
January 25, 2016
This is the first of the discounted Open Letter books I picked up at the end of 2015. I'm a fan of reading works in translation and they have so many great titles on offer. This edition is lovely - color, design, weight, etc. Stambolova tells the story of 7 individuals and how their lives interconnect. The writing is sparse and we don't get a lot of details, but I'm a fan, so that didn't bother me.
I loved the character of Margarita and this scene, in particular, that is reminiscent of Kafka's The Metamorphosis: "Margarita had not left her room for two days. Prickly cookie crumbs and whole or half-eaten apples were strewn among the sheets on her enormous bed. Piles of clothes carpeted the floor..."
A taste (haha) of Stamolova's writing style: "Big snowflakes descended through the darkness and melted in the light. Margarita stopped for a while by the group of people, but then suddenly felt hungry. She bought a bar of chocolate, and munching, continued on her way. Cold chocolate under falling snow, the nicest thing."
And one more perfect tidbit, this one pertaining to Maria, Margarita's mother: "As a matter of principle Maria did not permit herself such thoughts. No analyses of any kind. A snapshot was sufficient for her. Analysis made one weak. It interfered with one's goals. People who believed they achieved anything by analyzing the situation deluded themselves. They never achieved what they wanted, instead achieving something else."
I loved the character of Margarita and this scene, in particular, that is reminiscent of Kafka's The Metamorphosis: "Margarita had not left her room for two days. Prickly cookie crumbs and whole or half-eaten apples were strewn among the sheets on her enormous bed. Piles of clothes carpeted the floor..."
A taste (haha) of Stamolova's writing style: "Big snowflakes descended through the darkness and melted in the light. Margarita stopped for a while by the group of people, but then suddenly felt hungry. She bought a bar of chocolate, and munching, continued on her way. Cold chocolate under falling snow, the nicest thing."
And one more perfect tidbit, this one pertaining to Maria, Margarita's mother: "As a matter of principle Maria did not permit herself such thoughts. No analyses of any kind. A snapshot was sufficient for her. Analysis made one weak. It interfered with one's goals. People who believed they achieved anything by analyzing the situation deluded themselves. They never achieved what they wanted, instead achieving something else."
December 31, 2013
Lovely, lovely writing. This author is Bulgarian, and the novel was translated into English. So I hope the Bulgarian is as beautiful as the translation! I was engaged by the protagonist from the first page, and completely intrigued by his psyche and his way of moving through the world, along with all the other characters. The theme of this novel is fatalism, trusting in something other than the analytical mind that everything will happen as it does. Fabulous!
July 20, 2015
DISCLAIMER: I am the publisher of the book and thus spent approximately two years reading and editing and working on it. So take my review with a grain of salt, or the understanding that I am deeply invested in this text and know it quite well. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would purchase this book, since it would benefit Open Letter directly.
May 18, 2014
The prose in this book is elegant and the story is strange and magnetic. I'm not sure if there is magic happens, so to speak, in the plot, but I do feel that the story worked a spell that bewitched me throughout the telling. I think that I need to read this again, some day, to see if my impressions change.
This is a lovely read, and I feel full having experienced it.
This is a lovely read, and I feel full having experienced it.
March 5, 2015
Such a mysterious little book shifting from fairy tale to mundane realism. I want to read all of her books now.
April 28, 2015
One of the odder books I’ve ever read. No dialog. An assortment of lost souls sorting themselves (and each other) out. I will probably need to reread this book at least once.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews