The author classifies this highly prized book of short fiction to be linked stories, and I recognized character names repeated from story to story, but struggled to find cohesion. The only consistencies I could gather were that Mark's sister Bella died, and he was never as close with their younger sister Laura, that perhaps due to that loss he struggles to end relationships with women, and for no reason I could discern his male friends are flawed. Or maybe that's from the lack of a father figure?

Truly Damian Tarnopolsky does make each piece unique here, from location and time setting to incorporating each piece of a coat of armor. I'm not sure if it's the experiential nature of the writing that I found jarring, or if it was the ambiguity of story shards and innuendo. I got the feeling this is so too much for itself that the title doesn't even fit on its cover.