One of the things that makes Ling Ma’s stories in Bliss Montage so extraordinary is her ability to blend keen perceptions of human relationships with fantasy elements that somehow make the fantastic an intimate part of ordinary life. There is the house in “LA” the narrator shares with a hundred ex-boyfriends, the pickup date in “Yeti Lovemaking” who turns out to be a yeti in a human suit, the drug in “G” that makes the body literally disappear, and the opening in the closet of a college professor in “Office Hours” that leads to another world. The fantasy elements in Bliss Montage don’t take you out of this world but rather plunge you more deeply into the confused strivings of the characters in this one.

Each of Ling Ma’s stories works by building resemblances, interweaving several stories of different relationships to bring out truths about each one that otherwise might slip by. She doesn’t try to build to a knock-out punch but closes many stories at a heightened moment that leaves you on edge and having to think back over how the different strands of narrative have led you to that point.

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“Returning” is perhaps my favorite story for its blending of the present journey the narrator takes with her estranged husband to the fictional country of his birth (a vaguely eastern European Garboza) and her experiences with her friend and occasional lover named only Y. The husband wants to take part in a strange ceremony of healing and rebirth in which each participant is buried in the ground overnight. He abandons her at the airport in this strange country, leaving her to find her own way to the site of the ceremony. During that evening when she is stranded, she thinks about her relationship with Y which is typically a confusion of friendship, distant lovemaking and terse communication. Her internal wandering between memory and present in which she yearns for an always elusive clarity and closeness leads to a poignant moment in which the need is clear but there is no final breakthrough.

Well, I talk about a favorite, but for me all eight stories of Bliss Montage are unforgettable. Each one dances on the edge of fantasy, the surreal, the satiric and the profoundly moving need for love and selfhood. The fact that Ling Ma’s characters are always on the verge of fulfilling themselves but never quite getting there makes this collection all the more true to life.

The stories in this collection blithely mingle the quotidian and fantastical with shockingly normal comportment. Sex with a yeti. A drug that makes you invisible. All surround the all too human experiences we’re often oblivious to.

After Severance, Ling Ma releases a collection of 8 short stories bringing magical realism that is told through heartbreak, women in society, and the experiences immigrant women have. The short stories can capture the idea of loneliness throughout life in a whimsical yet terrifying way. Every short story shows the pain these characters experience at the hands of others while still having a silver lining of hope. From a woman living with her 100 ex-boyfriends to a toxic female friendship that toes the line between loathe and obsession, Ling ma creates melancholy storylines that make you hold onto every detail.

Ling Ma’s ability to give so much with such short stories is amazing. This was my favorite collection I’ve read this year so far; I just want to read more and more from this author now. If you are a fan of Carmen Maria Macho’s writing style, then this will definitely be something you’d enjoy. Also, can we talk about the cover because I keep staring at the beauty.

Incredible collections of stories! Was easy to devour in one sitting. The emotional impact of these stories makes me crave another sit down and re read as soon as possible. I’m so excited to see what else this author creates!

the stories in bliss montage use surrealism and absurdism in a way that is both subversive yet tame. the former, i refer to how ling ma uses these elements in a way that is startling and unlike her colleagues, but remaining clever and sharp. yet it is tame, not in the sense that it is shallow, but holds back from revealing its true depths and providing a more succinct closure in order to widen the space left for interpretation. it leaves you empty, starving for more, left with only an orange in hand of which you have to peel off its thick skin to gain sustenance. as a student of literature, i enjoyed how ling ma was able to play with the idea of genre, leaving me contemplating about the real truths—and whether there actually is a truth—to what “woc literature” actually entails.

however, writing-wise, the one flaw i could pick up from this was how monotonous all her narrators felt to the point where all the stories seemed to be narrated by the same person, all connected in the same storyline. and whether that was deliberate, which it felt like it was, it made the reading process tedious. (3.5)

Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for the ARC!
4.5 Overall. Ling Ma is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary authors. Severance is a book I read during the early months of the pandemic and has somehow really stuck with me til this day. Bliss Montage really sucked me in from the first story and was all in all a satisfying, quirky collection of different stories.

I love how in Ma's writing, everything feels like it's possible; she never hesitates to explore the uncanny, supernatural, magical, layering onto a very real world. She teeters between the strange and real, often within one story.

Los Angeles, the first story, immediately drew me in with its voice and premise. Other standouts for me were G (especially relevant as an Asian-American Columbia grad, it was nice to see friendships given this level of exploration), Returning (masterful weaving of different narratives), and Peking Duck.

I oscillated between 4 and 5 stars and in the end settled for a compromising 4.5. The half-star I deducted is reflected in some other reviews here, some of the stories were just too open-ended and I didn't feel like I *got it*. Maybe it's just because of me, but I'm pretty okay with subtle short stories in general, some of these were just a little too subtle for it to feel satisfying. But the writing qualify and experience was good enough that I'd recommend this book without hesitation.

I read Severance back when it came out and LOVED it, so needless to say I rushed to request this story collection. Ling Ma is back with eight stories set just slightly adjacent to our own reality. Some of the stories are weird (but not as weird as say, Sayaka Murata's latest collection), but all touch upon the relationships we have with each other. Many of the protagonists are Chinese-American women, negotiating their own place in the world vis-a-vis others expectations of them.

As is the case with a lot of story collections for me, it was primarily the longer stories that stood out. One of my favorites was Returning, in which a woman visits her husband's country for the first time and experiences one of his people's rituals. While the metaphor of rebirth is a little heavy-handed, I enjoyed the examination of their marriage. In G, a young woman experiments with a drug that makes her temporarily invisible, while also navigating a difficult relationship with her friend. And in Office Hours, a woman befriends her older professor, setting her on her own academic journey (there are some twists here that I particularly loved but can't talk about them without giving too much away!).

Some of the other stories were less striking to me, and I found myself forgetting them after I read them, even if I was intrigued while I was in the story. In fact, it wasn't until G, the third story in the collection, that I was really hooked. But I also think that there is a lot to love about this collection, especially if you like quirky, experimental fiction. Ma's writing, particularly when it comes to social commentary, which is one of the things I liked most about Severance. Overall, I enjoyed this collection!

Thank you to the publisher for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Ling Ma returns with a collection just a haunting as her previous novel Severance. While still ominous in tone, Bliss Montage perhaps feels even more forthright in its sinister and snide ambiance. Characters themselves feel like they peel away like oranges, if that's not too on the nose. Reading these stories consecutively and in quick succession one after the other feels most gratifying, otherwise taking some pauses picking up and putting down this collection may veer the stories to feel a bit too daydreamy before their nightmarish quality. Sometimes a bit too conceptual, Ling Ma is still a impressive writer that knows how to actualize the uncomfortable feeling of duress one experiences when trying to, ultimately, just be oneself in the world.

Across all the stories in Bliss Montage, I struggled to connect with the chose narrator as well as the narrative itself. The references to modern culture came off as a bit outdated and tired, calling out to fitness and diet culture, LA life, and a plethora of other cultural phenomenons that have been passed through Twitter's fine mesh. Many of the stories begin in media res but are followed immediately with a burst of exposition, rather than a slow, metered reveal. Several of the stories start with intrigue, that is muddled by a propensity for telling versus showing. "The dream was different in that it wasn't actually a dream, but a memory that replayed in my sleep." was one such line that caused me to pause and consider whether or not I wanted to continue reading the work.
The first paragraph of each story was a reliably enjoyable read. Yeti Lovemaking was a comical highlight, but soon fell into the same rut where too much was explained over and over to try and ground the ridiculous setup as normal, versus just launching off with making love with a Yeti no questions asked and no holds barred. My favorite stories, Peking Duck, and Tomorrow, finish this work off on a great high note, in true contrast to the earlier pieces that failed to land for me. I am rating this work four stars as I truly believe the potential in the penultimate and final stories shows potential. This work, by no means, is the "floating island of trash washed ashore" described in "Tomorrow". I look forward to trying out more of Ling Ma's work, and I truly believe there's a story here for everyone, as most of my issues were highly personal preferences. Bliss Montage is at its best when it sets aside a driven commitment to revealing every minute detail, and instead lets the chosen narrator of each story process the plot in real time, with the start of each story as a launchpad, not a pause and rewind.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

“Severance” author, Ling Ma, has penned her sophomore novel entitled, “Bliss Montage”, which features a collection of whimsical short stories. Ma’s stories feature colorful happenings and storylines out of the ordinary. The front cover of this book is absolutely stunning, depicting oranges which are included in one of the short stories. Although I wanted to enjoy this story collection more because of my preconceived admiration for Ling Ma as an author, some of the short stories fell a bit flat for me. Ling Ma’s prose as always was compelling and beautiful, but the stories themselves seemed to lack significant meaning. Many of the stories were like getting really excited for a holiday and then it going worse than you had expected. It felt as if the stories were ambitious in their diction, but were always cut off directly before the punchline. Each story left me desiring more and wondering “was that really the ending?” Unfortunately, the more I read of Ma’s stories, the more the characters from each separate story blended together into one caricature of the same archetype of a person. There wasn’t really much that distinguished the main characters of differing stories apart and many of the characters weren’t very memorable to me. I appreciated the writing style and the themes of immigration, racism, and abuse that Ma delved into within this collection, but I wish she had allowed the stories’ endings to linger a bit longer. I would have liked to see different portrayals of characters and more satisfying endings in these stories. Although I am a bit disappointed in this work overall, I still have major respect for Ling Ma as an author and am eager to see what she does next.

I enjoyed this collection of short stories! Every story had its own independent voice, but they all went well together, which I always struggle with in short story collections. One or two stories always feel like they don't fit, but I didn't find that with this one. All of them are short vignettes of different women's lives which I found left me wanting to hear more of their stories. Loneliness tended to be one of the biggest overarching themes within this collection. The stories all tended to be kinda weird but very honest and creative, making me want to continue reading. They made me think, and I really want to come back to this collection and see what it makes me think on the second read when it comes out on September 13th!

Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I would read a grocery list if Ming Na wrote it because somehow she manages to infuse every word with magic. Whatever the It-factor is of writing, Ming Na has it. Severance was one of my favourite novels, and although I prefer novel-length work to short stories, I'd recommend this collection to anyone.

BOOK REVIEW: BLISS MONTAGE 🍊✨

A forthcoming collection of short stories by Ling Ma, author of Severance 📖

A character that lives with her husband and her 100 ex boyfriends. A story about a potent new recreational drug called G with curious side effects. Another story about Yeti Lovemaking (Yes this story is about exactly what it sounds like, and more!). A baby arm flapping in the wind.

Ma’s prose is juicy, and each story has its own flavour, with lemons, oranges, grapefruits, and other citruses that you’ve never heard of before.

All together, this one was a smoothie to read so I gave it 4/5 stars.

I was gifted a digital arc of Bliss Montage thanks to @fsgbooks. Pub date is 9.13.22. Now that you’ve had a taste, you’ll probably be thinking about it all summer now won’t you?🧃

Thank you to Net Galley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Many reviewers have commented on the fact that Ling Ma's collections features almost indistinguishable narrative voices. The narrator in each piece seems to share very similar characteristics to the one before, allowing many of the stories to bleed into each other. While some people did not enjoy that, that's maybe one of the (many) reasons that I did. Each piece, for the most part, also contains a speculative element to it. Many have likened the surrealism to the sort of feeling you get watching an episode of Black Mirror: there's some distinctly "off" element in an otherwise real world.

In her acknowledgments, Ling Ma credits historian Jeanine Basinger for the phrase "bliss montage." Chris Randles' "An Efficient System of Exploitation" cites Basinger's A Woman's View in stating, “The leading lady can be seen laughing her head off, dressed in fabulous clothes, racing across the water in a speedboat, her yachtsman lover at her side … [The Bliss Montage] is a woman’s small piece of action, her marginal territory of joy." We see many of these stories discuss the particulars of being a woman -- on a societal level, on a familial level, on a romantic level, in society... Gender, alongside the constructs of race and identity, weaves its way into the commentary Ma makes in so many of these. While it wasn't always clear what the larger takeaway was in each of these, I enjoyed reading them all immensely.

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Stories:
LOS ANGELES
Well, first story down and it's immediately clear that Ling Ma is operating on a higher level than I could ever aspire to. I am, perhaps, not smart enough to dissect each of these stories in a way that will make any kind of sense. But, here's to trying!

"Los Angeles" was very unsettling, though also darkly funny at times. This is no surprise, given that's Severance in a nutshell. The set-up of this one is a strange one. The unnamed narrator lives with her husband (referred to as "the Husband" and who speaks only in $$$ and cent signs), as well as her two children (referred to as "the children"). Yet, that's not all! She also lives with her 100 ex-boyfriends.

"There are 100 ex-boyfriends, but two that really matter. Their names are similar: Aaron and Adam. Adam and Aaron. Aaron because I was in love, Adam because he beat me. I met Adam first, then Aaron. The wound, then the salve."

Ironic that these ex-boyfriends are, in some cases, given names and discrete identities. That the narrator is able to give them distinguishing characteristics, while her family is referred to in general terms. While her husband is given no real voice at all.

The most accessible takeaway I have is that the narrator is holding onto baggage from her past (trauma, specifically, from her relationship with Adam). Because of this, she can't ever fully engage in the life she has now. No matter where she goes, those pieces of previous relationships come with her. We see her reluctantly let go of them as the story progresses. And we also see how even her children can identify some of that baggage.

My only real complaint with this one is that I wish it was longer! It gave me a lot to think about, despite its brevity.

ORANGES
Well, this story feels like an expansion of the first one. We once again find ourselves with a nameless narrator, who is reflecting back on an abusive relationship with a man named Adam. As was the case with the first story, many years have passed since they ended things and the narrator has a new life (one that ultimately seems unfulfilling, albeit in a different way than what she had with Adam). That new life isn't the focus. In fact, it's more of a passing thought than anything. What the narrator seems more preoccupied with is how to process her trauma in a way that doesn't let it define her.

After a chance run-in, we find her following Adam around the city, ultimately ending up at the apartment he shares with a new girlfriend. It's there that we discover the narrator wants to remember who this man is; to remind herself of what he is capable of; to reinforce that people do not change, despite feeling incredibly changed, herself, by the experience.

G
This was more developed than the previous stories and, because of that, I think I enjoyed it more. We see the narrator (Bea) and her childhood friend Bonnie taking a drug known as "G" on their last night together before Bea leaves for grad school. Aside from knowing that the drug renders its users invisible to the outside world (“Do you know how easily the world yields to you when you move through it in an invisibility cocoon? It lifts the tiny anvil of self-consciousness”), we are told that:

"It's said that G stands for gravity, an allusion to the comedown heaviness, when the body feels like a stone sinking. But that's just a theory. Our old dealer, this girl in our dorm, claimed that G is short for ghost. She once told me, menacingly, when I bought a dozen pills, that if I took them all in one sitting, I'd turn into a ghost forever. Past the realm of invisibility is the realm of dematerializing."

Yet, the story isn't one that comments on drug use, necessarily. There are bits and pieces of that, but the real "heart" of the story (air quotes very much intended) lies in Bea's history and dynamic with Bonnie. Both young women are Asian Americans who have immigrated with their families. As a result, they are sort of thrown together as children. Because of that shared experience, they remain friends, even when it starts to become unhealthy. Bea's then-boyfriend points out that she's not obligated to remain friends with Bonnie forever. And to that, Bea reflects:

"How to explain certain things to a white boyfriend. How to explain that I didn't have very many close Chinese friends. That, growing up among immigrant parents who pitilessly pitted the second-gen kids against one another -- comparing our test scores, recital performances, college acceptances, physical appearances -- my friendships with peers from the community were especially fraught. That Bonnie was the only one I kept in touch with from that time."

There's this idea of being "anchored" while using the drug. And given that Bea often used "G" alongside Bonnie, Bonnie was her anchor in this sense, tying her to the real world. However, I think Bonnie also anchored Bea to her culture and certain parts of her identity. We eventually see Bea make conscious efforts to distance herself from Bonnie (after a series of red flags make the decision feel unavoidable), but ultimately, this last night they spend together is her attempt to restore things to good terms.

You cannot separate the toxic dynamic that forms between the two girls from the toxic commentary and expectations surrounding their femininity (often at the hands of the older generation). At one point, when describing her mother's selective interest in her, the narrator states, "Her flamethrower gaze annihilated all women's magazine adages about loving yourself, all body-positivity Oprah episodes; it could reverse all waves of feminism." We see the weight of these expectations seep into their exchanges, in which much is said of Bonnie's gaze towards Bea. Of Bonnie, she says, "She wanted to be wanted -- all the time, by everyone. But, in certain moments, specifically by me." This thought prefaces a vulnerable musing Bonnie shares, one she wouldn't comfortably articulate were she not under the influence of G: "'Do you think,' she asked one night, 'that if they combined the two of us, we would make the perfect woman?'" Bea questions this and ultimately determines that "she wouldn't stop, I thought, until she had totally consumed me. I'd end up in her digestive tract, as she metabolized my best qualities and discarded the rest."

While the ending of this story is just as off-putting as the previous two, this one makes more sense to me. You can trace the hints and clues that Ling Ma expertly inserted along the way. I really liked how Goodread's Hanna Gil put it in her review of the collection:

"A friendship between young girls becomes a need for domination, so the drug that makes one invisible is a tool for enslaving another person."

All of these stories so far have been thought-provoking, but this one has (by far) been the highlight for me.

YETI LOVEMAKING
Well, the title did warn me...

This one's weird. But it's also really funny. And kind of sad. A woman finds herself going home with what she believes to be a man, but is really a yeti in disguise. She's relaying the experience to an unnamed "you," who is a man that broke up with her three months before the yeti encounter. And everything about it initially feels unnatural and strange. But the human body adapts. She adapts. And right as she's started adjusting to this new, unfamiliar thing, the ex-boyfriend calls her. Attempts to reel her back in. But by that point, she's speaking yeti. Kind of an interesting metaphor for heartbreak, if you think about it.

RETURNING
See, this is exactly what I meant before. Ling Ma has the ability to make me feel like my brain just isn't working hard enough. This story was longer and more fleshed out than some of the others. And while there were bits and pieces of it I understood -- theories I had about what she was trying to convey -- I don't have a super clear takeaway from it.

Our narrator is traveling to the fictional country of Garboza with her husband, Peter. Both are writers, though their work has been received differently. Both have also immigrated to America from another country, which was something that initially bonded them. However, their trip to her husband's homeland aligns with some marital troubles they're sorting through. When they arrive, Peter has walked off the plane without the narrator, leaving her to try and catch up with him. She eventually realizes he has headed into the town's annual festival and partaken in a transformative ritual that requires him to be buried alive overnight. Meanwhile, the narrator has also clued us into the ways in which her work mirrors the state of their relationship and her unhappiness. She's discussed the affair she had with a fellow writer/former schoolmate. There's definitely something here regarding transformation and identity and the immigrant experience... I'm just not quite sure what that something is.

I really enjoyed the sub-story featured here, Two Weeks, in which the protagonist and her husband agree to be cryogenically frozen for economic reasons. Only, there's a glitch in the process for the protagonist and she has to wait two weeks before attempting it again. Thing is... she doesn't. She carries on without him. And it's hard not to see all of that as a parallel to the burying ritual Peter undergoes. Again, I'm not sure exactly what the commentary is here, but as is the case with all of these stories, it did get me thinking.

OFFICE HOURS
I really enjoyed this one, even if the ending felt abrupt. Interestingly enough, there's a meta moment during one of the narrator's class discussions that comments on the idea of an ambiguous ending (a running theme in the majority of these pieces):

"The movie doesn't show you the answers. The ending simply reflects back to us what we all want."

This discussion in her class is framed around the 2001 movie Ghost World (which I love). It's one topic of conversation in the narrator, Marie's, course on disappearing women in film. Not so coincidentally, the subject of this short story is also focused around a disappearing woman. We have a bit of a surreal The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe moment that occurs. The narrative begins with Marie as a student, spending an inappropriate amount of time in her film professor's office. We hear some of the Professor's (capitalized, as that is his proper name in the story) musings and frustrations about academia. And eventually, when Marie steps into that same role, we see those musings and frustrations play out, specifically as they pertain to a woman in academia. When she bumps into the Professor about fifteen years later, the two of them go back to his old office, which has since become Marie's. There, he shows her - behind an old armoire - a chamber into another world. An escape, if you will, from the intolerable parts of everyday life. We don't know much about it. But the parallels between it and what's featured in Ghost World (as well as the other films mentioned) are undeniable. Like Enid, Marie doesn't know much about this place she is escaping to. And yet, she knows it will be better than where she is.

PEKING DUCK
What a layered story this one was. And it felt like a little bit of a callback to a section of "Returning." In "Returning," there's a point where the narrator talks about her husband's class on Truths and Half Truths. She says:

"They discussed autobiography and autobiographical fiction, the shaded differences. I knew his shtick. First, he would bring up the topic of alternate selves, talk about fiction's capacity for stretching memoir, for deepening autobiography. 'Fiction can be a space for the alternate self,' he would tell them... 'It often serves as a fantasy space for our other selves.'"

"Peking Duck" begins by recounting an anecdote featured in Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman, in which a student answers a "My Happiest Memory" writing prompt with a memory that he never actually experienced. This anecdote comes up again later in the story when the narrator is attending a workshop for her MFA program. The discussion is centered around the idea of who gets ownership over a story. Is it the author, who reframes it for the reader? Or is the person who initially experienced it? There are no clear-cut answers on this debate, but Ma proceeds to use this idea of framing and reframing.

Ma shares a workshop piece that features a story that the readers know was inspired by her mother's experience as a nanny. After receiving scathing remarks from her peers about the subject matter and the way she approached it, one of the classmates asks, "Is this story autobiographical?"

We discover that the narrator has shared the story, as well as several others, with her mother. It is featured in her upcoming short story collection... one "with a vaguely Chinese cover image of persimmons in a Ming dynasty bowl." I point this out because it is reminiscent of the cover image we receive for this short story collection. And, for not the very first time, the reader wonders how much of these stories feature autobiographical elements? That's the beauty of them, really. The combination of real and surreal. As the most grounded of all the stories, "Peking Duck" does an excellent job of showing masterful reframing. We read the same anecdote through two very different lenses, offering two very different takes of the narrator's mother.

I loved this one. A true demonstration of how masterfully layered Ling Ma's writing consistently is.

TOMORROW
This story is the perfect example of how Ling Ma manages to sort of seamlessly incorporate a surreal element into the real world. Our narrator, Eve, discovers she is pregnant with her ex-boyfriend/boss' child. Only, she experiences a prenatal "defect" that has become very common in America: the child's arm is hanging out of her, while the rest of the body continues growing inside. What at first feels jarring and disturbing quickly becomes a way for her to feel assured about her future role as a mother ("What at first seemed grotesque was now just lovable"). She finds herself caring for the arm, as it is an extension of the baby growing inside of her.

Meanwhile, she takes some time off of work to return back to her home country. There, she stays with an elderly great-aunt, exploring pieces of her culture that she has missed while living in America. At one point she muses about what she feels a homecoming should be: "to be comfortable in a way you couldn't be elsewhere." However, that comfortability quickly dissolves as her great aunt discovers the child's appendage, looking on in horror and disgust. She comments:

"Now this expression was familiar to Eve, reminiscent of the way her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles had all, at one time or another, looked at her. It was a look of dismay and confusion, as if they didn't know what to do with her, couldn't quite claim her as their own."

Ultimately, the experience of returning has soured for her. While in the airport, Eve begins to experience contractions as she witnessed a (white) husband and wife launch into a frenzied panic, having missed their return flight home.

The commentary here is not 100% clear to me, but given Eve's conflicting thoughts about both America and her homeland, I imagine Ma is alluding to the discreet experience of immigrating from a young age and being raised in a culture unlike your parents. Following that encounter with her aunt, Eve thinks:

"Her family would only wound her, nothing more, so that she went through this life maimed, but still she went through life... None of this mattered because she would return to the US, where she would give birth to her baby, the first in the family to be born an American citizen. He would be free from his lineage of demanding ancestors, free from their restrictive traditions and expectations. She could withstand the brutality of this moment for the lucidity it brought her: she would never return. She would never come here again."

Eve cannot relate to the great aunt, staring at her in shock and dismay at her unconventional pregnancy. Nor can she relate to the hysterical white Americans, completely losing their composure at the thought of spending another second elsewhere. She fits into neither category, but rather, exists in a space entirely her own.

I love Ling Ma's writing style, and the way she depicts interiority of the women populating her stories. This collection, however, feels more like a collection of strange snapshots than full stories; none of the vignettes have satisfying conclusions, though some reach a more natural stopping point than others. Overall, I enjoyed the weirdness, magical realism, and ocasional grotesqueness--there are sharp depictions of stalking and domestic abuse, an imagined baby arm growing out of a pregnant woman, and a rebirth festival that involves burying people underground, overnight--of this collection. I wish there had been more to link the stories than themes of loneliness and disappearance, and I wish they didn't feel so fragmented.

i feel the need to disclose that i read 90% of this book while getting tattooed, so i didn't get as absorbed in it as i expected, mainly because pain is distracting. i think when i read it a second time, it will be fully consuming. these stories are weird but so smart and creative. there's not a lot of closure, which is frustrating, but it makes you dig deeper and deeper into the story in a way i really appreciated.

4.5/5

I had a complicated relationship with the stories in this volume. The premises were compelling, the action tight. The endings generally left me feeling like there was something just beyond my grasp, eluding my understanding by the littlest bit. 3.5/5

Most of these didn't work for me, unfortunately. I love weird stuff in fiction, but I couldn't get invested in any of those stories because of this weird, bizarre surface. It was maybe a bit too detached for my liking, too vague. The stories didn't have satisfying endings, but there were some strong moments or scenes I enjoyed, so that's a plus.

The cover of Ling Ma's short story collection Bliss Montage is a package of oranges, vibrant and shrouded in plastic. Oranges and tangerines appear throughout the stories, briefly connecting them. In "Oranges," a woman goes to lunch with an ex-boyfriend, whose orange rolls off the table:

"I watched the orange disappearing off his tray, and I heard myself say, Just get another one. He shook his head, saying that it was okay, that he didn't need the orange after all. And then I would insist again. You paid for it, I'd say. You're owed an orange. He loved oranges, his favourite fruit. One of his few ways of showing care had been peeling them for me when I was sick, telling me they were vitamin dispensaries. He resisted again, saying again that it was fine, it wasn't worth the trouble."

This instance of an orange dropped to the floor is representative of Ma's characters across the eight stories: there's something wonderful underneath the rind, but the characters are too disaffected to ask for what they really want. The strongest stories in this collection are when Ma leans fully into speculative fiction: in the standout stories "G", "Yeti Lovemaking", "Returning", and "Tomorrow", surrealism fuses into the natural world effortlessly, and Ma's characters don't question their strange realities. Antigravity pills? A portal in the wall? Yeah, that's normal. The slower of the stories, especially in the collection's second half, while still well-rounded stories, feel like they belong in a different book. If Bliss Montage is about characters affected by dreams and impossibilities, never quite reaching the best version of themselves, entries like "Los Angeles/Oranges" and "Peking Duck" feel less in communication with the rest of these stories.

Throughout these stories, it eventually starts to feel that Ma is reshaping the same voice into different stories. Bliss Montage, ultimately, rides one note for a long time. In both "Returning" and "Peking Duck," her characters are writers stuck between two homes; in others, the characters are disillusioned or ensnared in a version of their lives they no longer want. There wasn't enough dynamism to separate these stories, and as a result, although tenderly written, they begin to blur together. In some stories, like "Yeti Lovemaking," the writing feels perfect: offbeat, breezily crafted, and knows exactly how long to stay. In others—namely "Office Hours"—the pacing lingers; the surrealist reveal happens too far in, and the story feels weighed down by itself. But then you get a story like "Returning," which feels like the centrepiece of the book: the reader is airdropped into Garboza, a fictional country, which is both a homecoming and an unfamiliar ground. The purpose of this trip is a very belated honeymoon, an attempt at reconciliation between husband-and-wife writers. "Returning" is Ma at her strongest: weaving us through the unknown, keeping information safeguarded, and landing on a sharp, sharpending that leaves you stunned for a long minute.

I have a swing-and-miss relationship with most short story collections. They're a difficult balance to get right. I came into Bliss Montage enraptured with the imagery of plastic-wrapped oranges (FSG never gets a cover wrong, I swear) and while I would've liked more range and swiftness in some of the entries, this collection still establishes Ma as a writer deftly handling complicated relationships between ourselves and various homes, while also being a bold, defiant, conceptual thinker. Bliss Montage is a little like the oranges that appear throughout. You have to peel it first. You have to work at it. A little patience, and then you see it.

After reading Severence by Ling Ma, I was really looking forward to this short story collection and was not let down. Ling Ma excels at making the familiar, unfamiliar and this bizarre and gorgeous short story collection does just that. Plus the cover is one of the best I've seen!