The Subterranean Travels to the Outer Space Dreams of Shalimar and Gable is a division sign with an identity crisis. It’s a bowl of rock candy, a crystalline romance that wants you to bite, even though you know it’s better when you lick. It’s a love story in the amusement park of relationships that rides the truth like a rollercoaster spaceship. The admission is free, but the cost is sky-high. The ticket is golden, but also heavy. It loops and winds on a mosaic carousel where the horses run from their orbits and the music is better. It’s a bubble bursting with adventure, told in conversations and reflective moments, leading to a discovery that two people belong on the same side of the mirror.
This novella takes fashion advice from trees, it doesn’t return library books or compliments, and it leaps years and jumpstarts hearts. It paints your toenails with purple graffiti, spells sexy with two more xs, and it declares that romance is not dead, it’s just taking a nap in the back seat of an old flying car. It can’t hold still for pictures and it smokes cigarettes that rhyme. It records you when you snore and it pokes you in the mouth when you yawn. And it pronounces the first meal of the day like this: breafeks.
It’s about the ironic collision of parallel lives. It’s an accident that happened on purpose. And while it all happened just moments ago, it pretends to time travel. It’s a beauty. And so is she.
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