A collection of short stories and poems and what appear to be random thoughts that would not usually work so well together, but somehow in this book they do.
The book has little stories about seemingly everything, from being a kid learning to ride a bicycle out on your own without anyone caring to menopause and growing old, from simple things like looking up at the sky and listening to birds sing to how a corpse is dressed before being buried. It has childhood, adulthood, first experiences, mistakes, dreams, escaping into the natural world, memories, hopes, and truth. What more could one hope to find in a book so small?
The randomness of the events explored almost excludes there being a theme and could prove to be confusing to some readers, but others might find it an accurate portrayal of how random and chaotic life is as we go through it.
The experiences shared in this book as well as the characters that step in for brief encounters that just stick with the readers are so diverse and do a wonderful job depicting the humanness of the emotions and occurrences.
Each story does not last long enough to bore, and ends almost too quickly, but it does its job of making the reader feel something, and that is all that really matters in this form of art.
I found the writing to be compelling and skillful. There is just something so fresh and raw about both the style of writing and the words written to tell what feels like an autobiography of human experiences. Despite probably being fictitious, there is something very honest and pure about Every Awful Thing.
I recommend this book to all those who enjoy quick reads and who wish to explore the world of someone else to learn of a different perspective without being committed to too much details and order and sense.
