I was super excited about this follow up after reading Severance, but unfortunately, I didn't love it. I felt in a lot of the stories, there was this interesting premise, but not enough development of the main character for it to really all come together. Don't get me wrong, there are some standouts, and some really amazing details like a What Would Judith Butler Do? poster.

Unfortunately, these stories weren't for me. I normally love weird, surreal narratives, but there was a disconnect for me. If it sounds interesting, I recommend picking this one up.

I love short story collections, and I enjoyed Ling Ma’s debut novel Severance, so thought I would give this short story collection a try. Sadly, it was a bust for me - just not my cup of tea in a variety of different ways. Some of the stories were SUPER weird, some were just boring. All features similar narrators - often nameless, unhappy Chinese-American women with the stories told in a sort of detached, monotonous way. Sometimes there is a high concept to the stories which is perhaps intended to be metaphorical but I didn’t always get what the point is. And often the stories just sort of trail off without any resolution. The writing was interesting at times, but overall, this book was just really, really not for me.

huh? i have no idea what i just read. some of these stories were very interesting but then others made no sense at all.. at first i thought they were all connected but now i’m not so positive.

This collection of short stories was fantastic! Bliss Montage covers a wide array of complex emotions capturing the experience of immigrants, women, and those who feel like they simply don’t fit in. I loved every single story in the book. Ma’s prose is fantastic: provocative and captivating. She manages to create such a rich narrative within each story that their length doesn’t inhibit the connection you feel with the characters. I truly think this book needs to be analyzed in a literature class. There are so many themes here worth discussing.

I LOVED Severance, and Bliss Montage is a delightful return to Ling Ma's brain and way of seeing the world. She has such a special way of contrasting the heightened and the ordinary, and using that contrast to reveal things about our normal lives. I can't wait to read more from this author!

Living with 100 ex boyfriends, invisibility drugs, secret portals to different worlds; Ma has given us a magnificent group of short stories to hide inside of for 228 pages. As the stories became more and more absurd, so did my affection for this collection. Some stories challenged the hell out of me and required a reread, and I appreciated that.

4 stars

A short story collection by the author of Severance (not the same as the TV show). Some stories were good while reading them, some were too long, and most were pretty forgetful. I'm learning I'm not much of a short story person!

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC. I found the writing to be very beautiful and different, but the stories a little hard to follow. I’m sure the point of these stories is too be complex and thought provoking, but it hard to grasp the message at times. I would read more from this author in the future.

Each story is so sharp and pulls the reader into its surrealist environment immediately. Ling Ma returns here after her widely loved Severance, a novel that seemed to eerily predict the pandemic, and leans into offkilter realities that so succinctly reflect ourselves back to us through her distortions. They exist in the real world, occasionally ‘a different, if not inevitable, time’ in the near future, but most quickly morph into the fantastical. These stories thrive on vibes and often leave the reader to piece things together themselves, though readers who tend to want a sense of resolution may find the stories stopping too soon for their tastes. Ma is interested less in the aftermath and more in the tension that builds, her stories are like watching the strain on the strings of a slingshot as it pulls back its projectile towards inevitable release rather than the target it may or may not hit. Her prose is fluid and fun, handling bizarre situations with the same calm as the mundane and her marvelous imagination is on full display to enjoy.

Brilliant and incisive, more knowing and intuitive on the subject of being young and getting older in the 21st century than just about anything I've ever read. I know I'm going to return to this one, countless times mentally and more than once for a reread.

Significantly better than the sum of its parts, and the parts are damn good.

YESSSSS let's hear it for weird little short stories!!! I haven't read anything by Ling Ma yet, but now I'm gonna go grab Severance. Her short stories were so funky, clever and original, and they stayed with me long after I read them. I devoured this in one sitting, but I kind of wish I read a story every day for a week so I could really immerse myself in the quirky/weird/emotional worlds. Reminded me of Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang, which also came out this year.

Ling Ma's 2018 novel, Severance, was a prescient examination of late-stage capitalism work life in the midst of a pandemic that turns people in zombies. It was incisive, surreal, and occasionally darkly hilarious. She was a writer to be reckoned with. Now she returns with a short story collection that explores similar concerns. You never know where these stories will turn, but they're worth the ride, even when it's unsettling. She entertains while making you think. Recommended for fans of Karen Russell, Kelly Link, George Saunders and the like.

The strange, languid dreaminess of Ma's first book, 'Severance', wanders through this collection of eight stories. Many of the tales serve up a tangy, irresistible fusion of reality and fantasy. I can't wait to see what she cooks up next.

I loved Severence and was excited to read these stories. The outlandish premises in each were definitely memorable, especially the house with the ex-boyfriends, the yeti and the uncommon pregnancy. But I struggled to connect the dots between the purpose of the story and the shock factor. I know there are deep thoughts for discussion here but they did not come to the surface for me. I was very distracted while reading this so perhaps it wasn’t the right time for me.

I tend to lean towards reading poetry and essay collects or short story anthologies so I figured it would be right up my alley but I just found these stories kind of mediocre. I think Ling Ma is a good writer but I just wasn’t really struck or wowed by anything I read! Maybe I’ll have to reread a couple stories after I get some space from it! I think this was a case of me being the issue, not the book.

It took me a while to get past the first story, Los Angeles, that starts with a couple lines mentioning the narrator's 100 ex-boyfriends. But I was quickly drawn into the blunt mysticism of the remaining stories.

The author explores themes that range from love gone stale to chasing a domestic abuser; from (literally) escaping the stuffiness of academia to challenging victimhood as a Chinese immigrant. Depending on the topic, the tone shifts between wry humor and more earnest reflectiveness. Although the voices sound matter-of-fact, they are not overbearing. My favorite story was Office Hours—maybe because I've always secretly wished for my own timeless Narnia to escape to while in grad school.

I was pretty entertained reading this in fits and bursts during subway commutes. Since I'm used to suspending my disbelief on the train, the whole magical realism angle lended itself well to that setting. I think the best aspect of this book, though, is that it never feels too gimmicky or cloying. I could feel myself being seduced by worlds that made no objective sense...they still managed to feel deeply familiar to me.

I just didn't click with the author's style. To me the stories seemed pointless and reading them felt like a chore. I'll give their works another try some time in the future, but for now I can't say I'm satisfied.

I thoroughly enjoyed this strange and surreal short story collection. While I appreciated the writing style, which alternates between archly humorous and poignant, what really stands out are the fantastic (and fantastical) premises. In one story, a woman in Los Angeles lives with her husband and children and her 100 ex-boyfriends; in another, a woman living in a decaying near-future America becomes pregnant and discovers that the arm of her baby is growing outside her body; and in a third, a woman follows her husband to his home country for a festival in which residents are buried overnight to heal themselves or fix their problems. Along the way, Ma cleverly and thoughtfully reflects on themes of belonging, homecoming, motherhood and relationships with mothers, and the first-generation Asian-American experience. I am probably going to buy myself a paper copy and reread the collection at some point to watch how Ma plays with these themes in each story.

My primary quibble was that the narrative voice didn't really change from story to story. I wasn't sure if this was intentional, but it meant that the narrators tended to blur together a little (though the surprising premises kept the stories distinct in my mind). And as with most story collections, some of the stories felt stronger and more coherent than others. My favorites were G, Office Hours, and Peking Duck.

I would pair with Rivka Galchen's American Innovations, Ted Chiang's Exhalation, and Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings.

I always have to be in a certain mood for short stories, so I held off on this one for a little while. There are some REALLY solid stories in this one - Peking Duck, Office Hours, Return. However, the rest fell flat to me. I continue to want to see more of Ma's writing and will be reflecting on these stories for quite a while.

Bliss Montage was quite different from my usual reading, more experimental, less conventional, completely different from what I tend to read. This collection of short stories felt dreamlike and speculative. Although the collection was far outside my comfort zone, it was clear that these odd stories were composed by a gifted writer with an ear for dialog and an appreciation for the macabre. Her talent is evidenced by her ability to make even Yeti Lovemaking seem somehow plausible. Or a baby's arm dangling out of a pregnant woman's body. Ling Ma is so mater-of-fact in her description of these strange phenomena, that it's easy to imagine just such a thing occurring regularly. My favorite of the collection was "G," about a drug that induces invisibility and the perils of overindulgence in this type of erasure. The bottom line: This may not have been the book for me, but I'll try other works by Ling Ma, just to see what she does next.