Body Music

Very ambitious. I value representation and I detest an echo chamber; why was I not blown away by this? Maybe I was expecting more happiness? The vignette style was fine, made me think of the films Paris, Je T'aime & New York, I love You: short stories of various kinds of love all taking place in the same city on an ordinary day (not a holiday). Some of the vignettes connect, but the two story lines that I clearly saw connect seemed like they just should have been told together, or otherwise have been more cohesive. The zero and first chapter make nice book ends that tie together with the near penultimate and last sections, even if I didn't love their content.

chapters zero and 21 (the last) are about the person who is moving and they talk about love and break ups and on the last page they key their previous lover's car with ‘I still love you'.In chapter one we see a mom people watch and mentally set people up as her adult son is impatient with her and then in chapter 18 the talk of his father's death and the importance of laughter. I didn't care for chapter one and thought chapter 18 would have been stronger if had more of a connected topic with chapter one. But I did appreciate a familial love being shown as well as the topic of grief being covered.

Loved two of the chapters that discussed polyamory, chapter 7 where it wasn't the male character's preference and chapter 9 where one asks to be a part of a polyamorous relationship or a triad/thruple. Wasn't sure about the one in between ‘Fuck Buddies' - was the married man bi (or something)? Was he no longer attracted to his wife and just staying due to the societal pressure? He doesn't seem to care very much for the other man, while the other man seems to deeply care for the married man. So the situation is kind of interesting, but it makes both characters unappealing to me.

Maybe it is just the usual way of a collection of stories is bound (a necessary pun) to have a mix of things you like and things you don't.



Read this all in one sitting.