Earth Angel

by Madeline Cash

In her electric debut, Madeline Cash synthesizes the godlessness of a digital age into a glimmering, sublime, life-affirming collage of stories. Earth Angel is a book like no other, the paperback that swallowed the smartphone. An Isis recruit, an adolescent beauty queen, and a childless millennial walk into a bar. A Biblical plague rains down head lice, aerial drone strikes, gender non-conforming frogs. An app throws a slumber party for a friendless office worker. Texans in the winter, the Taliban in Springtime, Teslas with ℮☥ bumper stickers, Frozen 5 in Arabic, architectural consistency laws in Laurel Canyon, the longest recorded nosebleed in history.
An unhinged jet stream that is ultramodern and poignantly timeless, capturing the angst of the post-millennial generation.
 

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Summer, Short Story Collection, Horror

152 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2023

About the author

Madeline Cash is an American author and co-founder of Forever Magazine. Her debut novel Lost Lambs was published in 2026. She previously authored a collection of short stories published as a book in 2023 Earth Angel, op-eds and interviews with artists featured in publications like Nylon, Los Angeles Times, Highsnobiety, and short literary fiction in The Baffler and Granta.

Reviews

[Rachel Seo]

The fascinating thing about reading books by people who are basically my age (Cash is, I believe, 26) is that you can look up their Instagram accounts and use your impression of their posts to inform your reading. Cash's feed looks exactly like what you might imagine from someone who grew up Lutheran in the Valley, went to Sarah Lawrence and has been profiled in Nylon: a little pouty, a bit irreverent, cohesive but somewhat insoluble (if my mother looked at it, she wouldn't understand it). The other day I looked up the Instagram account of this other girl who went to Sarah Lawrence, and it gave the same energy as Cash's, so maybe it's a Sarah Lawrence thing. Probably. I don't know.

I liked 'Earth Angel,' and I thought the writing was clever, but the unfortunate and also possibly fascinating element is that again and again, as I read the book, I thought, 'Of course.' Of course there's a plague story, and of course there's stories about doomed relationships with men that don't adapt a tone of affectation but still, somehow, feel like they're designed to fit together into a massive orchestration of image that includes the stories and also Cash's Instagram presence and also her magazine. This is not really a knock on her, because this is sort of the way things will be for us young people, I think. Every young person wants to design their own brand of cool, and Cash is just sooner to it than most.

[Britt DiBartolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

baby at the drug deal was a good story

[el · Rating 2 out of 5]

so cynical, so derisive, and so unsurprising, at such excessive levels, that anymore time with these stories and i feared i was going to contract the uber stylish psychosexual misanthropy currently in vogue among anglophone litfic writers—look for the disaffected register they all share, a “self-awareness” that does little to blunt characters’ chronically online ennui, and maybe also an eating disorder—like an infectious disease. a book that hopes its edginess will propel it into niche “anti-establishment” microcelebrity status. 2.4/5.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book for the coquette cannibalism bows blood on white lace braids and lots of tweets about being a “pervert” overly online girls

[nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

READING VLOG

The summer's hottest new book is: 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘈𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘭. This book has everything:

Bringing babies to drug deals. 𝘕𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘨𝘴. 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘻𝘦𝘯 5 in Arabic. "Autofiction". Calorie counting. And lots of love for 𝘑𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘬.

A flashy sardonic collection of killer shorts that can be read over and over again. Cash has a bite to her prose, sentences layered perfectly with wit, charm, and smart sitcom dialogue that never runs dry.

All the hot girls are reading this for summer. So, yeah. If you're not reading this, you're literally not sexy lol

[Taylor Patzman]

tl;dr: trauma porn, repetitive themes and phrases, her editors should be jailed and Cash should take a writing workshop


this book could have been very cool and a fun vignette into modernity had it been edited with more tact and written with more creativity. the short length of most pieces suffer at their own expense; perhaps compressing the themes into a singular novel or even lengthening the stories themselves could have done it a favor.

my opinion is, however, that this collection is a vapid and poorly executed series of stories that do nothing to embody the female experience. rather, i believe at times it can be harmful, cliche, and senseless. out of the 17 stories, 8 include mention or implication of eating disorders, and there are at least 3 mentions of rape. there are innumerable references to violent partners, abuse, and pedophilia. it would be one thing if these inclusions did anything to characterize or deepen the plot in any of the stories, but the majority of these traumatic experiences are simply thrown in as, again, cliche (specific to the female experience) or for shock value.

i also find Cash’s use of multiculturalism in the book to be fetishizing at times (particularly with croatians?) and slightly xenophobic at others. she obsesses over catholicism (and its aesthetics and stereotypes), dabbles in branches of christianity, and is definitely a weird horse girl. so many off-handed allusions to horses.

it is terribly written and edited. Cash repeats words and phrases across multiple stories in a way that makes it all feel cheap and poorly thought out: “perennially updating like a smartphone” [2 stories], “hang the moon” [at least 2], “vehicular manslaughter” [2 not including the epilogue ‘autofiction’], “sage-like” [3 stories !!!!], “libidinal” [2]. i’m sure there’s more, but the lack of creativity after finding her buzz words makes me think of Cash as a one trick pony (horse girl).

i didn’t hate all of it. “slumber party” (though super weird, disgusting, and unnerving) and “they ate the children first” (hilarious and original) were probably my favorites despite still feeling very lacking in creative process and development. i can feel the influence of perhaps kurt vonnegut, ottessa moshfegh, maybe a bit of raymond carver in their absurdism as well as the particular kind of nasty (ottessa) Cash is going for, but i think she needs a lot of help if she wants to be a timeless and original author.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is what it feels like to go on twitter for the first time

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty funny and there are even some great moments..but like…Feels bad? Empty? Edgy for edginess’s sake? Idk.. Very of the moment. I dont think i like this kind of thing…
2.5 stars probably

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a hysterical little book!
I simply adored this short story collection. I devoured it & wanted another 200 pages of her story telling.
The stories felt nostalgic, the characters were relatable, and each one made me laugh out loud. It falls perfectly into my highly sought after "bizarro" category.
Madeline's prose is exquisite.

Highly recommend this one if you're looking for something a little different that you can read in one sitting.

I ♥️ Clash books

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 21st century fever dream, where corruption and innocence coexist seamlessly, like having a panic attack but feeling jaded about it, like vaping too much and feeling lightheaded.

[Rachels_booknook_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightfully weird little story collection. I want more, unhinged stories are my favorite!

[Fiona]

Things she should’ve mentioned: the notes app, diet coke, the term ‘enby’, IUD arm implants causing weight gain, celebrity public apologizes, Berlin/Berghain, GoFundMe, driving for a food delivery service, enemas, graphic design on the iPad, SqarEats, and maybe #cutforbieber…

Lists.

[Jimena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Decepcionante.

[haven koehler · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ this was fun! sometimes you have to give yourself up to Nonsensicalness and just Vibe . perfect length

[Madeleine Walthour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of these stories actually made me LOL. Trippy and weird and funny and definitely recommend

[Max Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

What it would sound like if God railed Adderall and spoke to you through a self-checkout machine.

[Eve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book to read on the train in the morning when you’re too tired to read the book you’re actually reading

[Steph · Rating 2 out of 5]

okay so i love strange fiction - the weird, the unexpected, and even better when it has angst balanced out with humor. but i need it to add up to something, to feel like it has significance of some kind.

these (very short) stories are all entertaining, but they feel quirky for quirk's sake, without that necessary deeper level.

i feel weird making this criticism, because some reviews for sky daddy make this same point, but sky daddy does have that deeper level for me, and i adored it! perhaps earth angel does have that depth for some readers, just not for me.

also, there's a weird vibe of ethnic fetishization when any non-white character is mentioned, and there's some alarming ableism. it's tricky because with the ironic and sardonic tone of the writing, it's like cash is trying to pass these things off as part of her snark. but actually, no, however edgy you may be, it's still not cool to write about people that way.

i do like the way cash weaves details through the stories in this collection, referencing one within another. and i didn't hate this book, in all its nonstop cynical irreverence. it just didn't really do anything for me. i will probably still pick up cash's upcoming debut novel, just to see if that hits any better!

my favorite story in the collection is "sponge cake," which rings a bit sadder than the others.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

hilarious story collection that feels like late stage capitalism and culture infused into off kilter bits of prose.

favorite stories - Slumber Party, They Ate the Children First, Good Boy, Little Dubrovnik, Earth Angel, Hostage #4, Beauty Queen, TGIF

least faves - Plagues, Sponge Cake

average rating - 4.06 stars

[trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loving madeline cash’s work so far because she writes exactly how I experience the world. Life is choppy and its events are totally absurd when put back to back to back, and she captures it so well.

[Abbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

there’s a reason cash is the literary it girl of the moment!

[Mckayla Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

If girlhood is really like godhood (a begging to b believed) then what is womanhood? A devolution? An evolution? What is more divine than god?

Great short story collection. Long live weird girls forever and ever.

[Kamala! · Rating 2 out of 5]

THE END IS NIGH. HERE LIES ALL OF SOCIETY'S SINS. A collection for the vaguely trumpist masking as leftist post-feminist ironically capitalist white girls on twitter addicted to nicotine who love to be provocative for provocative's sake. A book I picked up at a goodwill this morning because I vaguely remember the big splash the author's debut novel made online that was controversial for reasons I never paid attention to but can broadly assume now. I could've put this book down (forever or at least for the night) but something about it made me feel like I would fall into a terrible reading slump if I didn't make it through. And in that way it is a page turner...

A Visit from the Goon Squad if the whole thing was that last chapter that I hated. Scrolls through a crew of loosely intertwined characters but makes no effort to give anyone a discernible voice.

This blurb on the back of this collection describes it as "life-affirming". Mama this is zillenial nihilism. I could've died. I took to writing a review (some of which are just the worst quotes I read) after each short story about 40 pages in when I realized that there was little hope for this getting better. Here are those:

Plagues- too short for me to have any real opinion on. Gen Z in the apocalypse I guess.

The Jester’s Privilege- sort of a worse version of the pr manager chapters in A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Slumber party- nothing

They ate the children first- just BREEZES through an interesting situation that I can imagine a more interesting short story about!

Hostage #4 - there’s a vague obsession with conflicts in the Middle East in this short story collection, which is hand wavey in the way the phrase “conflicts in the Middle East” is, so perhaps a commentary in and of itself but not a very good one. Something something about how it simmers within the American-zillenial conscience I guess.

Earth Angel- societal collapse is when they make five Frozen movies.

Beauty Queen- I found this one interesting! It is two pages.

Sponge Cake- the best one by far. A bold 2.5 pages.

TGIF- “the breast milk gives him strength to play Fortnite”; “it’s happy hour and for that hour we’re happy”. Are we kidding.

Little Dalmatia- all above critiques apply but also kinda liked this one.

Fortune Teller- “I look like Emrata”

Water Sports-“erotic mammograms”

Good Boy- ew.

Little Dubrovni- okay

Autofiction- credit where credit is due this is a fun way to synthesize the collection/give a glimpse into the author behind the collection. The ending is a bit on the nose.

THE NEWSPAPERS ARE ON OUR PHONES. Do you get it guys? Guys the newspapers are on our phones. Is anyone still here? Hello? Help. It's so dark in here. Hello? Guys. Hello?

[evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

as another reviewer said, reading this was like scrolling through twitter

[Grant Wamack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best short story collections I've read in a long time. Great variety/range, fleshed out characters, and an attention to detail that separates her from her peers. Every story hit me in some way. Madeline Cash deserves all the praise--high key.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Underwhelming and so on the nose 💔 said a lot of things like “I’m perennially updating like a smartphone, barreling forward into the profound depths of the universe” And I hate that.

[Hannah Hiemstra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique little book. Genius, really

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

julas høydepunkt, tett etterfulgt av å få high-end post-poo duftdråper fra aesop til jul

[Marcos · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of interconnected horror/comedy stories for the too-online zoomer. Sometimes gross without being grotesque, and always simple without being artless, my biggest gripe is the lack of ambition displayed.

Cash has handle on pace, and her prose is clear, but I feel like most of these could have done with a bit more workshopping. She seems to want to exist in a surreal space, but doesn’t commit to the bit to really make it work. A little bit more heft would have benefited the stories.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn’t a huge fan of this collection at first because I found the “sexualized as a young teen girl” themes unrelatable to my personal upbringing but the further I got in the stories I understood Cash’s sadness and frustration a little more beyond just shock value statements about terrorist organizations and pedophilic men. Personal favorites were “Beauty Queen”, “Good Boy”, and “Little Dubrovnik.”