Different themes weave all through these 9 tales. Grief, for lives misplaced too quickly, or for lives thrown away on the native bar. Being LGBTQ+, often in locations the place it isn’t altogether protected. The fixed menace of violence that permeates American tradition and, specifically, ladies’s psyches.
Ostlund herself — a trainer of 25 years, and a lesbian — grew up in small-town Minnesota. As a result of she writes about what she most intimately is aware of, her essays are constantly immersive.
Some of the impactful tales in Are You Blissful? is “The Stalker,” a few feminine trainer grappling with a sinister, doubtlessly harmful scholar. Ostlund juxtaposes the coziness of the trainer’s quiet house life, full with spouse and cat, with the chilly, uncovered feeling of fending for herself in evening lessons with a former soldier who might or might not need to harm her.
