These stories are well-executed, realistic portrayals of characters suffering from mental illness, but it's pretty damn punishing to go through each of these characters' personal pains story after story. This may just be my own sensibility as a reader, but I was more engaged with the handful of supposedly normal protagonists--the ones who didn't require medication necessarily, but who experienced the everyday neuroses and crippling insecurities that are just capable of ruining our lives. The young boys from "Divination" and "The Volunteer" were more interesting to me than the adults who'd been rendered incapable of carrying out their lives by mental illness. The adults were merely sad. The kids provided more insight into how sadness can plant itself in the brain and germinate over a lifetime.

The writing felt only adequate, but maybe that's because I just finished reading Ben Hale and Colson Whitehead. Almost anyone's else prose would seem pedestrian next to those guys.

Anyway, if you want to dive into the heads of some fucked-up people, this collection is for you. But don't read it if you'd rather not be dragged down to a bad place.