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sarahabein.bsky.social · @sarahabein.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories 4/10

A resounding "This is fine, I guess."<br><br>Her speech/essay at the beginning of the book is more or less a very good commencement speech. You'd be pleased to have it at your graduation. As an "amazing" essay? It's nothing extraordinary, though the idea of "The Opposite of Loneliness" is very lovely.<br><br>Keegan has a preoccupation with mentioning people's weight (fat is rarely portrayed as positive), or pressing her/her characters' foreheads/faces against each other (AKA... a writer-tic that one might not notice until all the pieces are presented as a whole), and maybe I'm just too far away from college to be excited by someone who, as the introduction says, "writes like she's 20." The ideas of her being jealous of others, while completely natural, kind of made me laugh a bit because Oh okay, you who has an internship at The New Yorker, lived on Cape Cod, and otherwise had all these interesting opportunities in life, you're somehow lacking? Sure. Okay. Fine. <br><br>I'm sure Keegan was a lovely person, with a lot of potential to do amazing things down the line. Her story is indeed tragic, but I remember being more moved by the essay about her from a friend on Buzzfeed Books, when this came out.<br><br>So, this is book is fine, but like Keegan said herself, there's always a better thing.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 20:29 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere