In To God, Esther Yi delivers a collection that pulses with electricity. The writing is sharp as we have grown to expect from this talented author. Here we are plunged into a decaying cityscape where alienation, spiritual hunger, and desire converge in surprising ways. If this sounds bleak, rest assured we are in capable hands. The voice is fearless, and the philosophical questions are thought-provoking. At once intimate and playful, this is a collection to be savored.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance e-galley; all opinions in my review are 100% my own.

To God by Esther Yi is a gorgeous, abstract collection of stories which reflect a philosophical exploration of our modern, absurdist world. My personal favourite of the collection was Lazarus City, with poignant lines such as "it brought me unexpected joy to have been scared about being punched in the face and to be punched anyway. The fear hadn't protected me at all. This was miraculous to learn."
Yi's work is dense with meaning and beauty; her collection is one which I will be thinking about for a very long time. As someone who has not read Yi's work previously, I am eager to delve into her body of work, and will gladly read everything which she puts out in the future.

The structure of this book was something I didn’t expect when I first started reading it. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, but that actually made it more interesting. It felt different from most books I’ve picked up recently, and I really liked that surprise element.

I love that it’s all short stories. There’s something about a collection like this that makes it easy to get lost in each story individually. I felt very connected to one of them in particular, though I won’t name which one just in case, but it really stuck with me. The stories are good overall, and I really appreciate the mix of dark and slightly absurd vibes. That kind of storytelling really stands out compared to a lot of what’s currently out there.

Even though it’s a short story collection, it felt cohesive in its own way.

Requested for potential inclusion for the short story review column in the next issue of Mslexia - thank you!

This was quite different in terms of writing style than anything I have read before (and it lead me to want even more to pick up Yi’s other novel). As someone who often struggles through short story collections, I found that the interwoven elements, themes, and settings here helped it to feel more cohesive, although each had enough of their own message and unique characters to stand apart as well. There was a lot of exploration of language, labour, love, identity, and of course, religion and belief throughout the stories, and some observations on these that struck me as genuinely profound. These stories may retread topics that have been written about in many ways before but they do so with a unique voice and aren’t striving to reach a particular conclusion, so the impact never feels forced.

Very melancholic and depressing, but not in a sad way but in a way that makes the reader reflective on their own lives. The book at first reads autobiographical, but as you read further you realise that each of the chapters/stories may or may not have different narrators. And isn't that what life is? Multiple perspectives and multiple phases come together to form the life that we live, that we exist in.

This book is a collection of short stories which are remarkably bleak. Yi is obsessed with the insides of people. Intestines, cervixes, and manufactured apartments, tents cobbled together, and pipes that crack through skin which then needs stitching, all make an appearance. Yi also seems interested in baggage which takes on the qualities of viscera- like the intestines of the characters, backpacks stay empty, or alternatively, duffel bags seem lumpy, like flesh. The fleshy quality of these stories are like sifting through entrails as Yi pulls together and pulls apart her characters, as though for divination. I find this book hard to review. Five stars. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance e-galley.

Enigmatic, ambiguous, alien, deploying stark fantastical imagery in depressive-opressive liminal spaces, where you can't be sure whether the phantasmagorical is innate to the world or the depressive-obsessive narrator, or if the narrator is the world. Misanthropic, in a compassionate sort of way. Egomaniacal in a self-eviscerating sort of a way.
   Yi posseses a unique authorial voice and her stories do tickle the mind, even if they are not, strictly speaking, the most easy and straightforward to enjoy.