certain stories in this collection lacked depth, instead reading like creative writing prompts that revolved solely around being as bizarre as possible. but, there were plenty of characters that, despite their fuckin weird surroundings, are very relatable. these women are funny, pathetic, lonely and painfully human. they are all just trying to find stability and connection in life.personal faves: ant colony, cat owner, & cannibal lover3.5 stars

THIS is what happens when you don’t read the book description in detail before delving in…. My word it was like walking through a fever dream inside a tumble dryer.Most of the short stories seemed overly explicit for the pure purpose of shocking and disgusting the reader, even though I got the underlying messages and symbolism within most of them.It almost felt as if I was reading assignments from a creative writing class. Now I didn’t hate every single story and two stands out that were quite e...

Alissa Nutting's, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, is unlike any other story collection I've ever read. The first story, Dinner, moved me in a profound way. It was awful and brilliant and possibly life-changing. Because of this story, because of the other stories like it in this collection--bold, surreal, deeply compassionate, and highly imaginative--I might just write differently. I might just live differently.Stories like "Dinner," "She-Man," and "Gardener" made me feel very human, very vulne...

to sum it up... this is a collection of short stories about girl bosses with sad lives. weird, funny, lowkey made no sense but also had deep underlying meaning. my favorite stories were "dinner", "smoking corpses", "hellion", and "gardener"these include:- the last moments with an array of strangers being held hostage inside a boiling kettle - a woman cutting off her hair so her new boyfriend will smoke it and see her memories (boyfriend has a hobby of smoking dead peoples hair, and they were cur...

Before we go any further I should say that after swinging wildly from delight to huffiness to outright mockery and then on to feelings of intense gloopiness towards Alissa Nutting, I ended up liking her and her fashionably bonkers stories more than just a little bit. There were a lot of ups and downs. We may as well get the downs out of the way first.Some of these stories are extremely silly. I know they cruise on the edge of zany surreal absurdist lahdidah, and that’s okay. But some of them are...

Throughout the last two or three years I've been transitioning away from a steady diet of things like science, philosophy, history, and politics and into a swift and roaring stream of fiction. (For the time being I'll opt to bypass all yawn-inducing, eye-shuttering, public self-analysis about why and how this has been occuring and just accept these turning tides for what they are. 'Cause, ya know, life happens, man, and sometimes you just gotta enjoy the ride, dude. Bro. Kimosabe.) During this b...

We all have jobs, and most of us would prefer better ones. If you don’t fall into this category, then I applaud you, but it is so easy to fall into dislike for anything that pries open sleep deprived eyes morning after morning and dumps you into bed exhausted to dream of all the living you would rather have been doing during your waking hours. Some of us, the lucky ones, get to pick our jobs, and sometimes we are pulled into the ones life deals us. Alissa Nutting’s wildly imaginative Unclean Job...

Aw man! See! This is why I don't tend to re-read books! Unless it's one of those books that was pretty much written to be re-read (Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest), it's probably better that I bask in the rosy glow of my first impressions. When I first read this collection of nutty short stories (sorry, had to), I was head over heels! It was love at first read! Don't get me wrong, I still "really liked" it the second time around, but I no longer think of it as AMAZING. Sniff. I don't w...

I wanted to read this book for so long that I can't remember the original reason i wanted to read it but finally the stars aligned and I did. It's a collection of short stories about women with various "unclean jobs," including deliverywoman, porn star, cat owner, gardener, knife thrower, zookeeper, alcoholic, etc. Alissa Nutting plays with how gender works, along with the messy violence, gross bodily functions, and the uglier sides of desire and lust. I am certain this author identifies as a fe...

I, too, have an unclean job; as in “It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it.” But that’s not what Alissa Nutting means. And it’s not what I mean either. This wonderfully imaginative work is not about employment. Instead, it’s about the many chambers of the human heart. I am boiling inside a kettle with five other people. Check.I’m expected to have anal sex with the winning contestant on the moon. Check.I took a baby panda home from the zoo. Check."You are embarrassing yourself on a national l...

wtf did I just read (in a good way) In Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls , Alissa Nutting introduces readers to the darkest, weirdest, most hilarious chambers of her mind. The book is a collection of very short stories featuring women and girls occupying different out-of-the-box roles such as a zookeeper, a knife thrower, the wife of a band leader, a porn star on the food channel and a woman about to be eaten alive. This book is weird , like really weird. I would pause after each chapter and

I have a feeling that bizarro just isn't my genre. Many of my friends have loved this collection (I read it based on many recommendations from them), but it was just too off-the-wall without enough development or substance in the stories for me to be able to enter into their spirit. I don't think it's fair of me to write a full review, since my sense is that Nutting is writing very effectively -- just within a genre that doesn't resonate with me. Many thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an...