What lives on every page is the odd way Polek has of capturing the world with language—an old oak tree makes “opening-door sounds”; a woman takes a deep breath “but still feels the her in her”—or how well Polek captures the depressing gray area of compromise when a couple, afraid to voice their needs, ends up in the “dumb strawberry-banana limbo” of breakfast smoothies, where there might not be a loser, but there certainly isn’t a winner.

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