Review by Booklist Review
Writer and artist Greene follows up her luminous first essay collection, The Museum of Whales You Will Never See (2020), with this eclectic title touching on numerous topics. From a historical review of giraffes in zoos, which includes ruminations on her own imaginary giraffe creation, to reflections on obtaining a mammogram and a beloved but "funny-looking" family dog, the author is vividly present in most of the pieces in text and image. A particularly strong essay is an intricately considered (and remarkably intimate) reflection of her experience modeling a balloon dress at Twist and Shout, the annual balloon twisters convention. (It is impossible not to be intrigued and beguiled by the teasing backstories of the attendees.) She dips her toe into the political with a pointed comparison of Ted Cruz to a "sentient bag of wasps" and reflects on the art of writing as she fondly recalls a memorable acquaintance. The combination of topics big and small and focuses broad and narrow with her eccentric perspective will please fans of creative essays and readers eager to experience Greene's distinctive approach.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
These whimsical meditations from essayist Greene (The Museum of Whales You Will Never See) reflect on the peculiarities of everyday life. One entry recounts the time Green was walking on a perilously steep road in an unnamed town and encountered a man holding a mysterious package who called himself the devil. Another describes how she met a "sorcerer" while traveling, then takes a meta turn as Greene reflects on her literary use of the figure (later revealed to be a museum director with a penchant for fantastical stories) as a metaphor open to readers' interpretation. Greene's illustrations, many styled after those of 19th-century naturalists, enrich the essays. For instance, the humorous "Ted Cruz Is a Sentient Bag of Wasps" skewers the Texas senator for changing his stances with the frequency of the insects' weeks-long life cycle, and marginal line drawings of wasps multiply on each page as the discussion of Cruz's hypocrisy becomes increasingly damning. Greene has a knack for evocative descriptions--as when she suggests her sister's basset hound--shar-pei mix is "built like... a claw-foot tub"--and her deliberate withholding of identifying details about the places and people that populate her essays lends them a fablelike quality reminiscent of Kafka and Borges. Every bit as strange and wonderful as the title promises, this delights. Illus. Agent: Duvall Osteen, UTA. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Exploring a world of marvels. Greene brings ebullient inquisitiveness to 26 illustrated essays on matters human and animal, mundane and metaphysical. With occasional interjections by children whom she counts among her friends, she investigates mysteries such as the concept of zero, the morphology of the giraffe, and natural history museum displays. About zero, she reports, "Nothingness first got a numeral in ancient India," where, she notes, "the concept of nirvana had long since taken hold. The mystic symbol has since met all kinds of resistance. Even typewriters at first made no distinction between the elliptic numeral0 and the circular letterO, didn't waste a key on that." Working at the Iowa Museum of Natural History elicits essays about a model of a sloth, which she was tasked with dressing in various holiday costumes, and a taxidermied ivory-billed woodpecker, which a visitor stole. Greene draws on a host of quirky experiences, including attending Twist and Shout, the annual balloon twisters' convention, where a friend constructs out of balloons a halter dress like the one Marilyn Monroe wore inThe Seven Year Itch. "Somehow this balloon dress, this intersection of what reads as balloon and dress and body and icon, somehow it becomes a category of its own," Greene discovered unhappily. "Spun in bespoke bubble wrap, I am not extra protected. I feel all but canceled out." In prose at once whimsical and poetic, Greene muses on metaphor and apophenia, or "a human tendency to see connections, to find patterns, though they aren't really there. Pareidolia is similar, the way we make pictures out of randomness, see shapes or faces, glimpse meaning where it doesn't actually exist." With deftness and grace, she draws connections and meaning from her fresh take on a vibrant universe. A delightful collection. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
