Slow Guillotine could’ve been written by any of my friends! Rivera-Dundas uncannily captures the ephemeral, irreverent, and realistically disjointed experience of building a sense of self away from home in your early- to mid-20s. The distractions and idiosyncrasies of the public in service, retail, and gig jobs become necessary as we claw out of the pits of despair clinging desperately to whatever dignity we have left and, if we’re lucky, a relatively acceptable credit score. Artsy and weird people constantly gamble on creative dreams, requiring us to find value in our days whether or not we’re one of the ones that achieves fame and multi-million dollar brand deals. This book would be great for readers that like toeing the line between surreality and magical realism and people of any gender in their Weird Girl Era.

Slow Guillotine has a bold, experimental energy, and I can see why the voice will resonate with readers who enjoy boundary-pushing narratives about art, identity, and precarity. That said, the storytelling voice felt a bit too erratic for me personally. I struggled to feel grounded in the narrative, and the perspective and tone skewed younger than what I tend to connect with as a reader. This isn’t a flaw in the writing, just a mismatch between the narrative style and my own reading preferences. Readers who gravitate toward voice-driven, unconventional structures and explorations of gender, community, and artistic ambition will likely find a lot to appreciate here. Even though it ultimately wasn’t the right fit for me, I can absolutely see its appeal for the right audience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Zero Street Fiction for the ARC!

Teo Rivera-Dundas' Slow Guillotine is a beautiful work of queer literature highlighting the ups and downs of working class queer life in New York. So many queer novels take place in large cities, with this work being no exception, though it highlights much less of the grandeur of the city and hones in on the small moments, the rhythm of the bookstore where the main character works, the patterns of the friends and lovers as they move through the world, making it work, whatever that means. The characters are vibrant and engaging, their personalities thriving in the pages, fighting for life in the mundane terror of daily life on the edge. This book is for people who love people, people who want to survive one way or another, people who believe in creating good things wherever they are.

This book really captivated me and swept me away in a lot of ways, and I didn't mind that I didn't come away feeling that there was one strong message or thoroughline through the entire story (rather, that there were a few that kept being revisited). It felt like an honest glimpse into a few peoples' lives and a few distinct themes, and I think I will be thinking about this read for a long time. To my mind, there were parts of this read that felt somewhat anachronistic for what is meant to be a mid-2010s period (characters saying "pov" or "i'm in my [insert thing here] era", 15 second videos rather than 6 second videos being the big "thing"), which did bring me out of the narrative slightly. Despite this, I found the author's description to be very engrossing and their characterization to be deeply engaging. In particular, I felt the choice to somewhat obfuscate characters' gender identities and where they fell on the cis/trans spectrum to be an interesting one, and I enjoyed it, although I found myself wishing this theme was explored more.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of Nebraska Press for providing me with an Advance Readers' Copy in exchange for my honest review.