Emma’s Reviews > Stag Dance > Status Update

“I experienced some despair at this. The difference between what I had somehow hoped and the dull clay reminder of my actual self effected in me a mortal frustration, a certainty that I was not deserving of any loveliness—a hatred of my own person that as I experienced it, I knew was laughable.”

“The brave thing would have been to tell them [...] that I didn't appreciate how they'd laughed at me, and that I wanted better in that regard. That laughing at her was no courtly nor gentlemanly way to treat a skooch. And even if they weren't interested in seeing me in any such way—even if it were impossible, ridiculous to so see me—then they still ought to have courtesy enough to play along.”

“…I had a feeling of simple stupidness. That I was performing something for which I’d no talent, and certainly no natural gifts, and the falseness was obvious and embarrassing, without even the thrill of perversion or menace.”

“I reached up with my free hand and pressed his fingertips harder into the flesh of my arm. Then my dad laid on the horn, we dropped our hands, and I got back in the cab for the long silent ride away.”

‘The Chaser’ was so interesting. Disgust battling desire. Love battling anger. On to ‘Stag Dance’!!!!

Ok so ‘Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones’ kind of let me down, but was still very interesting. Hoping the other stories in this collection are more deeply developed