At two stories in, I would have given this book 5 stars. The first two stories—-one about a captive tiger who falls in love with his keeper, the other about a man who decides to make a living by impersonating a doctor--are wonderfully written: quirky and deeply disturbing while still strangely funny and compassionate.

Farther into the book, though, the writer began to annoy me with what felt like the written equivalent of talking to hear the sound of his own voice. He has an obvious talent for sculpting words to his will, but some of his experiments (ex: writing from the imagined voice of a man he saw in a photograph, while the "real" voice of the man comments on the story in parentheses, often in a self-laudatory way) felt contrived. While they must have been entertaining to write, I think they should have been sacrificed in the editorial process.

For all the times this book frustrated and annoyed me, I would have given it three stars. But the last story was even more compelling than the first two (despite what I felt was a disappointingly vague ending), and whatever else I thought while reading, each story truly did suck me into its beautifully described world in a way that not all stories can. Reading interviews with the author after the fact also did admittedly color my feelings about this book for the better. It's an imperfect work, but it has its moments of brilliance, and it lingered in my mind long after I put it down.