''Bliss Montage'' is a 2022 short story collection by

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong ...

writer Ling Ma, published by

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer P ...

. Eight stories in total, the book's pieces span topics of dating, positionality, and diaspora literature, including pieces formerly published in ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

'' and ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

''. The book won the

National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, established in 1976,The Story Prize The Story Prize is an annual book award established in 2004 that honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up receives $5,000. Eligible books must be written in English and first ...

for fiction.

Plot

The book has eight stories. "Los Angeles" and "Oranges" are about a woman living in a house with her husband and a hundred ex-boyfriends. "G" follows two friends who use a drug to escape reality. "Yeti Lovemaking" involves a sexual encounter between a human woman and a yeti. "Returning" involves a woman traveling with her husband to his homeland to partake in an unusual ritual. "Office Hours", also published as a short story in ''

'', is about a mentee-mentor relationship at a university. "Peking Duck", originally published in ''

'', concerns the complicated relationship between a

woman and her mother, further complicated by the woman's position as a fiction writer whose work draws upon her and her mother's experiences. "Tomorrow" observes a woman's troubled, disturbing pregnancy, which her doctor explains as the result of toxic substances in her hygienic products.

Reception

In a starred review, ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...

'' found the short story collection's themes "rich". ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' was ambivalent on the execution of certain conceits but found "much to enjoy." ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' called the book "a striking collection that peddles in the uncanny and the surreal", albeit an at-times inconsistent one that lacked the "zest" of Ma's debut novel, ''Severance''. ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' lauded the book's feelings of loneliness and

liminality In anthropology, liminality () is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they ...

with interesting concepts. Similarly, ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' found the stories "uncanny and haunting". ''Wired'' observed Ma's combination of modern woman angst in literature—"women characters who move through cleanly depicted consumerist landscapes with emotional dampers on, either too jaded, too exhausted, or too bored by modern life"—with the additional alienation of being

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans with ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants). Although this term had historically been used fo ...

, which was especially noticed in the "masterful, ''

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese ''jidaigeki'' film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay he co-wrote with Shinobu Hashimoto. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, and Takashi Shimura, it follows various people who describe how a ...

''-layered spin on the Asian American mother-daughter conflict" in "Peking Duck". ''

The Star Tribune ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

'' wrote that the short story collection was "dark and fantastic and very, very true."{{Cite web , last=Manzella , first=Abby , date=2022-09-23 , title=Review: 'Bliss Montage,' by Ling Ma , url=https://www.startribune.com/review-bliss-montage-by-ling-ma/600209535 , access-date=2024-08-22 , website=www.startribune.com , language=en

References

2022 short story collections Farrar, Straus and Giroux books Chinese-American literature Asian-American literature Asian-American short story collections