Book Review: “Bliss Montage” by Ling Ma
Misery Montage?
When an author publishes a book of short stories, it usually comes after their debut as a novelist. It seems rare that an author comes out of the gate with a short story collection. The idea is that novels sell, while short story collections don’t. Thus, a publisher will only recoup its investment on such a collection only after the author has a successful novel under their belt. To that end, Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage follows from 2018’s debut novel, Severance, a book that I rather enjoyed — even though it felt a little like a Station Eleven knockoff (but a good one). Bliss Montage is an entirely different beast. Not that I didn’t enjoy it — I mostly did — but it feels a little more unique and creative than her debut. The reason for this might be that these stories (some of them, at least) were published after the novel came out. I’m basing that on the fact that some of the pieces here previously appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2023 and The Best Short Stories of 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners. Surely that’s a sign of some of these stories being of recent vintage.
You may have noticed I subtitled this review Misery Montage. Is that a sign that this is a terrible story collection? No. The reason is I was looking for an antonym for “bliss” since the author ironically uses that word. These are surrealist, sometimes grotesque, stories of women who face confusion in their relationships: they see their significant others transformed into creatures they can no longer fathom (sometimes quite literally as in the story “Yeti Lovemaking,” where the narrator starts dating Bigfoot). Or they see members of their families as being impediments to their happiness and freedom. Either way, these are stories about the confusion surrounding one’s identity. As with any collection of this sort, readers are bound to have favourites. Mine is “Office Hours,” a novelette about a film studies professor and her relationship with her instructor before her, and the secret that they share: a portal to another dimension that exists in her office. I didn’t quite grasp the significance of the ending — and that was true of some of the stories — but I was still beguiled by the story, nonetheless. If anything, Ma has a hyperactive imagination and the selections in this volume prove it.
I thought it also was a neat trick that “Oranges,” which immediately follows the story “Los Angeles,” seems to be a sequel to that piece in that it might feature the same antagonist: an abusive ex-boyfriend who the narrator of “Oranges” seeks to get revenge on by ratting him out to his current amour. The story “Peking Duck” is intriguing too, as it uses the same story within a story within a story of sorts as a framing device with different narrators (thus calling into question its authorship), then repeats itself in the same pattern throughout the rest of the piece — it’s a little hard to explain, but you’ll know what I mean when you get there. I thought “G” was also interesting and a little like some of the fiction I’ve written in the past: it’s a story about a drug that allows the user to briefly become invisible (mine was about a new form of birth control that allowed women to give birth to luxury goods). And “Tomorrow” is also memorable partially due to its concept: an older woman past the normal childbearing age becomes pregnant but has the baby’s right arm stuck outside her vagina. Did I mention that some of these stories were a little on the gross side? Yes? Don’t say you hadn’t been warned.
The only liability of this collection is that it sometimes has a problem with endings. I read “G” on the same day that I’m writing this review and cannot — for the life of me — remember how it ended. The same holds for “Los Angeles”: it doesn’t end so much as it just stops on a dime. However, the ending of “Tomorrow” was clearer: it’s a story not so much about an appendage growing out of one’s genitals but a piece about how you can never really call any place home. So, these stories could be said to be a mixed bag, and sometimes Ma’s sense of playfulness and experimentation pays off, and at other times, it doesn’t as much. However, what’s true and exciting about this compilation is that it takes real risks. Who would have thought to render one’s husband’s dialogue as nothing but dollar signs to signify his ambivalence to the non-material needs of his wife, as Ma does in “Los Angeles”? Or that said wife would also have 100 ex-boyfriends living with the couple as a sign that the narrator seems to be unable to untether herself from the romances of her past? As one can see, some fascinating ideas are burbling under the hood of some of the seven pieces in this collection. Some of the stories work better than others — but that’s true of just about any short story collection that’s out there in the market. Bliss Montage is a captivating read that shows that Ma is no one trick pony. If anything, you can say that Ma has a voice — even if it is a bit sullen and sarcastic, though some of that may be due to belonging to a visible minority group in the most unforgiving country in the world for that sort of thing: the United States. Overall, Bliss Montage is no mere stopgap or holding pattern: it makes the case for a unique and original new stylist in American fiction who is going to go places. You can only marvel at the fact that Bliss Montage is a quantum leap in originality from Severance, and you can begin to wonder after reading the two where Ma’s trajectory will be from here. This is unsettling, but sometimes brilliant, stuff.
Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage will be published in trade paperback by Picador on September 12, 2023.
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