Reading this book was like watching a chain reaction ten-car pile up in slow motion from different angles over and over again and I couldn’t look away. Emily and Dawn are messy, delusional, proudly self absorbed and completely self destructive. I couldn’t have asked for two better women to follow in this crazy ride of a novel.

I don’t want to give away anything so I’ll just say that Emily is an online Astrologer a bit down on her luck who becomes obsessed with a man she does a reading for who she sees as “exalted”. And Dawn is a loose cannon with anger issues and a drinking problem who has just been dumped by her girlfriend for obvious reasons. The novel is told interchangeably from their POVs.

Neither of these women do themselves any favors in terms of the trajectory of their lives, they both are far too reliant on others for personal validation and (unashamedly) money. Though Emily does seem better at not completely alienating herself from those around her somehow. It’s so fascinating to read their thought processes honestly and how they both continually refer to their former therapists advice and immediately discard it.

Now there is a huge twist in the novel, which I won’t revel or hint at. I may have figured it out earlier than I should have but that wasn’t a problem really, it just made things cringier and I was saying “no, no, no” A LOT. But when the reveal did happen perhaps it made me want a bigger reaction. I was expecting an explosion, implosion, freaking out, maybe a teeny tiny reflection on life choices even. But it was just kind of like a bit of hyper-ventilating, embarrassment, laughing and then a confrontation and moving on. But I have to remember (besides being fictional characters), none of these people are exactly “normal” well adjusted people. So, I suppose that was a small let down for me.

If you like drama and lives that are train wrecks then this is absolutely a book for you. It grabs you and relentlessly does not let go.

I devoured this book. I can sometimes have trouble with abstract-like books as oftentimes there’s so much confusion I’m unable to glean any kind of feeling from them. But Saskia Nislow was able to create a kind of a hallucinatory dark fairy/folk tale with just enough horror and enchantment to keep me glued to the pages.

There were parts of the story that reminded me of Maurice Sendak’s Outside Over There and even a tiny bit of Where the Wild Things Are. And of course there were touches of changeling, kelpie and other folklore throughout. I think these little nuggets of connection helped me to invest just a little bit more into the novel, which is always helpful.

I found Saskia Nislow’s choices endlessly interesting. Like using descriptive identifying traits instead of names (The One Who Runs Away, The Crybaby, The Liar) and that they use italics when the children speak but quotation marks when the adults speak. It made me think that they had a reason for everything, even if I couldn’t figure it out lol.

As for the message of the book, that’s something I’m still thinking over tbh. It could be something as simple as children trying to navigate a complicated world on their own, especially these days. Or there could be something deeper. Either way, I already know this one requires a reread sometime soon and I’m not mad about it.

This book has left me quite stunned. I don’t really know how else to put it. I did not expect it to take the turn that it did and I think I’m still processing the entirety of the novel.

The story is essentially told in three parts, from three perspectives. A Swedish writer who’s on a stipend in Madrid for three months starts the book off. She seems fairly normal just finding her place in the world and maybe suffering a bit of burnout. But as the novel unfolds it becomes quite clear she has repressed rage, self destructive tendencies and seems to need to prove she’s worth something. She meets Mercuro in a bar and in exchange for a place to hide he’ll tell her his story. He’s an adulterer, misogynist and a pretty all around not great guy. Without giving too much away he’s trying to get his wife back on a kind of reality show called ‘Carnality’ after his affair but that goes horribly wrong and he’s now on the run because of it. And then there’s the nun Lucia, the showrunner of Carnality. A 93 year old woman who had a revelation in childhood which told her she had to “lead them through the apocalypse”. And she’s been helping people because of that, with very questionable morals.

All the characters are completely messed up, Lucia maybe the least? But none of them are what I would describe as well adjusted human beings. Even so each narrative is so compelling and unpredictable and nuts that I couldn’t help but be addicted to it. Each character also had their own distinct voice which I found impressive in a translated text. The writers voice was mostly even but you could sense the undercurrent of anger, Mercuro’s was manic and jumbled and hurried like a man scared and Lucia’s was gentle and thoughtful and straightforward like you’d imagine an older woman’s to be.

I absolutely recommend this book (though CW there is a little bit of animal cruelty and death). It’s a well plotted, well written and plain mind-bending.