At TriQuarterly, Hanna Park reviews Joanna Ruocco’s Man’s Companions:
Joanna Ruocco’s newest short-story collection is a keen manipulation of ordinary experiences into strange, funny, lovely, uncomfortable truths. “Chipmunk,” for instance, features a narrator who ponders her insecurities and then reflects on the absurdity of relationships: “I know that with my eyes shut I could kiss a whole parade of men and never guess the difference, even if one of them was my brother”….
Ruocco is consistently inventive. She tilts the world as we know it, challenging our senses. With stories that average just a couple of pages, the brevity of Ruocco’s pieces makes it easy to zip through them—don’t. Don’t even read them in sequence. Each will stand alone, and will probably stand taller that way.
See the book’s webpage to peek inside, and read more about, Man’s Companions.