This Book Will Change Your Life - Normally Special by xTx.

Travel. Read. Keep traveling. Keep reading. Riff. And so it is with Normally Special by xTx from the Tiny Hardcore Press. There was travel and there was read and there was this well received and much buzzed collection by its mysterious author, and as we read it we thought the stories here are fleet of foot and flash, sometimes slamming and sometimes tender, or wanting to be, and providing a survey of sorts of both the female experience, violence, burgeoning sexuality, marriage, and parenting, the latter of which we definitely don't see enough of, but also of female writers and styles, some Margaret Atwood here, a touch of Mary Miller realism there, a splash of Kim Chinquee, and as all the pieces swirl around, leaving the reader at time breathless, other times sad, we couldn't help but think that ultimately, these are stories about control, losing it, wanting to gain it, fantasizing about it, having it ripped away, and maybe worse of all at times, having it imposed on us, even in small, but terribly cutting ways, such as the protagonist in "The Art of Folding Towels," who is never going to get it right, can't get it right, won't get it right, because there is no right and never will be.