Do you like Bojack Horseman? Do you need something to hold you over while you wait for season 6? Are you maybe nursing a sore heart or wondering if you’ll always be alone or if being with someone always feels like this or if it’ll ever just get better? Do you like run-on sentences that verge on neurotic but somehow veer just on the line between charming and twee? This is the short story collection for you.
These stories speak to you and are written to you in a way the feels like a best friend is delivering them over lunch or coffee. Most of the narratives are first person, and are told in the kind of run-on sentence full course ahead stick your foot in your mouth and chew on it way that Bob-Waksberg is best at. I got this as an audio book, because I love the voice talent assembled and because I think this kind of stream of conscious narrative works best when spoken. Bob-Waksberg makes his characters sound effortlessly human, even when there are unique little twists to their predicaments like they’re all in hell, or they’re super heroes, or in one case, a dog. It’s a collection of deeply felt short stories that can feel crushingly real.
Some of the stand out stories, for me, included: Missed Connection, which takes the form of the strangest missed connection ad you’ve ever heard; Rufus, about a dog as he tries to make sense of his man-monster’s life; Up-and-Comers which should so clearly be turned into Bob-Waksbergs next show and absolutely must star the narrator of this one, Stephanie Beatriz when she’s done Brooklyn 99; and Move Across the Country, which hit me in all the feels for my own habit of literally leaving town when things go poorly. I also loved everything read by Colman Domingo because that man could create pathos reading the french language part of my Cheerios box (we do it in both languages in the Great North, yo) which I wouldn’t even understand because I am so profoundly bad at understanding French, but that’s okay, because I would feel it in the soul of my gut from his perfect freaking delivery.