Viral

April 27, 2015
Characters mired in self-doubt and second-guessing try to muddle through their lives, giving the 12 stories in Mitchell’s first collection appealing intimacy and poignancy. In “No-No,” set in an American internment camp during World War II, a Japanese-American vacillates in his decision whether or not to swear allegiance to the nation that has imprisoned him and his family. The protagonist in “If You Cannot Go to Sleep” finds that the various therapeutic measures she uses to overcome her insomnia only rouse further sleep-depriving anxieties. In “Smile Report,” a supervisor who reprimands one of his cashiers for not smiling enough on the job finds his own composure slipping when she invites him out on a date. Mitchell’s skill at revealing the inner lives of her characters by exposing their vulnerabilities is displayed to magnificent effect in “Three Marriages,” which explores three marriages in a single family and the reasons why couples break up, stay together, or consider new relationships. Her stories range in tone from the wryly whimsical “On Friendship” to the tragically dramatic title tale. Readers captivated by her seemingly effortless style will also appreciate the biographical fantasies she spins about herself in the book’s closer, “Biographies.”

Starred review from May 15, 2015
Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World, 2007) offers readers 12 distinct stories that combine the mundane and the very strange to turn ordinary life inside out, examining familiar feelings through a lens of bizarre and sometimes-magical details.Mitchell's stories range pleasantly across a spectrum of genres, from realism to surrealism to gentle, absurdist science fiction. A guidebook advises tourists on the sights of a fantastical America in "States: An Itinerary," describing a country where New York homes have haunted mirrors, Louisiana is a myth, and visitors to California are often afflicted with a virulent form of dreaminess called Golden Fever. In "My Daughter and Her Spider," a mother struggles against the distance that appears between her and her daughter when they acquire a giant robotic spider as a pet. Quieter stories dive into friendships, marriages, and a fleeting episode of adolescent violence, laying out events and images with a restrained, precise voice that sometimes flares into graceful fancies and comedic punctiliousness. Mitchell explores the marriage of Louis and Lucille Armstrong and the crushed defiance of a Japanese man faced with the loyalty questionnaire in a World War II internment camp. "Biographies" indulges the conceit of presenting various fanciful backgrounds for the author ("Emily Mitchell was born in London in the middle of a garbage collectors' strike"); the story is made endearing by the way even the most unlikely details pile up to an emotional truth. While the tales have varying relationships to normal reality, they each pull the reader into a vivid, focused contemplation of their characters' longings and despairs. A few stories drift toward claustrophobic meandering, but as a whole, the collection is exceptionally readable, surprisingly varied, and held together by a striking authorial point of view. A rich collection that takes the familiar obsessions of love and loneliness and views them from uncanny angles in ways that are magical, cutting, and intensely recognizable.

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April 1, 2015

Sometimes offbeat, sometimes lightly searing, but mostly both, the stories in this first collection from Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World) capture acute social discomforts in the contemporary world. A cashier is given instructions on how to smile, an elderly woman leaves her husband because of his long-ago affair, and visitors to America are warned about culture shock (e.g., Vermonters supposedly shoo away chimney witches in the fall). VERDICT Unsettling, absurdist takes on the recognizable; for most readers.

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