Review from a Transgressive Fiction Fan
The cliché would be to say that this book is about dysfunctional relationships, but it’s really not. It’s about people doing the best they can with the materials around them. Darkly funny, heart-breaking, and full of insight into the deflating truth of human nature, Drake creates a mosaic out of scenes of the lives of Vanessa and Lucy, two sisters living in pre-Whole Foods Portland. It’s a place where people don’t report their mother’s death in order to keep her reverse-mortgage alive, in a sort of real estate-based afterlife. Where people are permanently branded by their shitty jobs via deep-fryer. And where the guy living in your driveway may or may not carry a sexually transmitted demon. This is an incredibly funny book with moments of breathtaking insight. A book which you will hate yourself for putting down. A reminder that there really are no such thing as dysfunctional relationships. Everyone we’ve invited into our lives is there for a reason, sometimes a regrettable one, but it is the collage of these relationships that defines a life. In the end, all human relationships are a work of junk art.
“Insightful” Review from a Mainstream Reader