My Monticello: Fiction

Johnson doesn’t shy away from any topic as she calmly delivers, with too-real certainty, a ruthless kind of truth … These six novel, avant-garde stories showcase Johnson’s ingenuity … Johnson plots each piece delicately, arranging them so that the subtleties shine through. The stories range in content and in tone—some ironic, some hopeful, some slightly sadistic—but each pulls its own weight, and each feels completely natural alongside the rest of the collection … Throughout, Johnson’s one-of-a-kind voice offers a gateway to modern perspectives, and necessary ones at that … Part of the enjoyment in reading My Monticello is gaping at Johnson’s seemingly endless skill in plotting and sentence structure. While the novella is a bit slow-paced at first, and a couple of the stories could have benefited from a more apparent focal point, the collection is full of depth, and there are too many takeaways to count … both unprecedented and inimitable, a beautifully thought out collection of elegant craftsmanship.

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