Bliss Montage
 | |
| Author | Ling Ma |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | September 13, 2022 |
| Pages | 228 |
| Awards | National Book Critics Circle Award The Story Prize |
| ISBN | 978-0-374-29351-2 |
| Preceded by | Severance |
Bliss Montage is a 2022 short story collection by Chinese American writer Ling Ma, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Eight stories in total, the book's pieces span topics of dating, positionality, and diaspora literature, including pieces formerly published in The Atlantic and The New Yorker. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2022 and the Story Prize for fiction.[1][2]
Plot
[edit]The book has eight stories. "Los Angeles" and "Oranges" are about a woman living in a house with her husband and a hundred ex-boyfriends. "G" follows two friends who use a drug to escape reality. "Yeti Lovemaking" involves a sexual encounter between a human woman and a yeti. "Returning" involves a woman traveling with her husband to his homeland to partake in an unusual ritual. "Office Hours", also published as a short story in The Atlantic, is about a mentee-mentor relationship at a university.[3] "Peking Duck", originally published in The New Yorker, concerns the complicated relationship between Chinese American woman and her mother, further complicated by the woman's position as a fiction writer whose work draws upon her and her mother's experiences.[4] "Tomorrow" observes a woman's troubled, disturbing pregnancy, which her doctor explains as the result of toxic substances in her hygienic products.[5]
Reception
[edit]In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews found the short story collection's themes "rich".[6] Publishers Weekly was ambivalent on the execution of certain conceits but found "much to enjoy."[7]
The New York Times called the book "a striking collection that peddles in the uncanny and the surreal", albeit an at-times inconsistent one that lacked the "zest" of Ma's debut novel, Severance.[8] Los Angeles Times lauded the book's feelings of loneliness and liminality with interesting concepts.[9] Similarly, The Washington Post found the stories "uncanny and haunting".[10] Wired observed Ma's combination of modern woman angst in literature—"women characters who move through cleanly depicted consumerist landscapes with emotional dampers on, either too jaded, too exhausted, or too bored by modern life"—with the additional alienation of being Asian American, which was especially noticed in the "masterful, Rashomon-layered spin on the Asian American mother-daughter conflict" in "Peking Duck".[11] The Star Tribune wrote that the short story collection was "dark and fantastic and very, very true."[12]
References
[edit]- ^ Varno, David (2023-03-24). "Announcing the 2022 NBCC Award Winners". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
- ^ "2022/23". The Story Prize. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
- ^ Ma, Ling (2022-05-16). "Office Hours". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
- ^ Ma, Ling (2022-07-04). ""Peking Duck"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
- ^ Ma, Ling (September 13, 2022). Bliss Montage. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374293512.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ BLISS MONTAGE | Kirkus Reviews.
- ^ "Bliss Montage by Ling Ma". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2024-10-27.
- ^ Gyarkye, Lovia (2022-09-09). "Ling Ma's Surreal Subversions". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
- ^ Kelly, Hillary (2022-09-09). "Review: 'Severance' author Ling Ma doubles down on surreal premises in 'Bliss Montage'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
- ^ "Review | Ling Ma's surreal stories explore the absurdity of labels". Washington Post. 2022-09-14. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
- ^ Bromley, Camille. "Ling Ma's 'Bliss Montage' Peels Back a Different Kind of Fantasy". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
- ^ Manzella, Abby (2022-09-23). "Review: 'Bliss Montage,' by Ling Ma". www.startribune.com. Retrieved 2024-08-22.