Title: Impossible James
Author: Danger Slater
Edition: Paperback ARC
Page Count: 224 pages
Rating: 5 / 5 ✨✨✨✨✨
Short Summary:
My father was dying. There was no hope. Then he took a screwdriver to the brain. Got pregnant. And found the cure for death.
Impossible? That’s my dad.
“If desire itself is scarcely more than a spark, what’s an arsonist to do when everything around them is already burning?”
Danger Slater is one of my favorite writers, and I don’t even know how to categorize his genre. I guess, according to the internet, it’s “bizarro fiction” – which I suppose probably just means kind of weird and fucked up and maybe… impossible? See what I did there? Whatever, I love it & I love him & I love this book.
“Mean love was better than no love at all.”
The summary for this book tells you everything and nothing, and I feel that’s probably the best way to approach reading it. There aren’t any page numbers, and with extremely fast pacing, I spent the my entire read feeling sort of like I couldn’t get my feet on the ground properly – which I mean in the best way possible. The chaotic feeling kept me on my toes, and I loved the race to the finish – I read the whole thing in two sittings, and kept thinking about it after putting it down.
“What is a rainstorm if you’re already wet?”
Despite being about things that will absolutely never happen, Slater’s writing and book is poignant and feels true to life. An absurd amount of realism lies between the lines, and I found myself leaving little highlighter marks and sticky page arrows every couple of pages (I’m the kind of person that writes in my books, I’m sorry to the book community as a whole). I loved too many lines and quotes from it to choose one, so you get several throughout the review!
“This is one of the secrets of how the world works. In the moment, it all seems so dire. And then everything just… kind of moves on.”
There were several moments when reading that I almost completely forgot what the book was actually about because of how introspective and relatable some of it felt, which I think is a pretty cool thing to happen in any book – especially one about totally nonsensical things. Then, I’d get slammed back into the “book reality” of a man growing other, tinier men within himself, and I was completed taken aback by Slater’s brilliance. Being able to find things to relate to within the seemingly unrelatable is no small feat (I’d assume? I’m no writer!), and I just really like reading his writing “voice” and the sort of fourth-wall-breaking bits throughout.
“We are all born broken. It’s part of the design.”
This book is great, as are all the others I’ve read by him (and, I’m assuming, all the rest he’s written). Buy it, read it, thank me later! It’s out today, 6/15!
Let's Get Galactic 
This sounds so weird, but so intriguing!
Great review!
(Www.evelynreads.com)
It was seriously weird, but so good! Thank you, Evelyn!!