Patrick Rupp’s Reviews > Spell Heaven and Other Stories > Status Update

I think “Feral Memory” is my favorite chapter of the book so far. I think it does the best job of tying all the themes of the book together into one short story of Henry. Hearing the story of this former photography professor, and how his outlook on art affects his worldview, was such an intimate read. It reminds me of doing double exposure photography in school. And the stray cats?! I nearly cried.

“We only breathe for so long.”

I loved the story about the narrator’s mom and the statistics that she would write down about her favorite baseball players and if they had new babies or not. The story about the three drug addicts on the bus broke my heart, and the following story about Liz put it back together again. There’s just so much good stuff in here about the importance of connection and the toxicity of judgement.

okay i’m like totally obsessed with this book. it’s not as easy of a read as I anticipated but it’s just because it’s so poetic that I feel like i’m carefully observing and digesting each word. “don’t we all misspell heaven from time to time” really got me.

So far it’s been a super relaxing read. I’m about a quarter of the way through and I really dig the seaside vibes. Also appreciate the LGBT perspective.