This is a collection of short stories that are surreal, cyclical and downright quirky in places and most of them I didn’t really understand in terms of what I know Everett normally writes about.

The Appropriation of Cultures, both music and flags, was the most obvious story where a Black man, Daniel, buys a truck with a confederate flag on the back . The seller of the truck asks Daniel twice if he wants him to remove it but each time the answer is no. This causes confusion but Daniel tells others,

“I’ve decided that the rebel flag is my flag. My blood is Southern blood, right? Well, it’s my flag.”

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He convinces others to use the flag proudly, calling everyone who does brothers, much to their distaste until it is seen everywhere used by Black people. It is at that point that the flag disappears from the State Capitol with no fanfare. Result.

This is the most obvious story in the book, starting with the appropriation of the song ‘Dixie’, and that is probably why I enjoyed it the most.

Other stories I was less sure about. One of these was Epigenesis where a large talking trout provides marriage guidance to Alan Turing but presumably not the mathematician because the real Turing was gay. Anyway, this fish talks and the word it says to Turing is ‘epigenesis’. I looked it up and it means an embryo developing progressively from an undifferentiated cell. Turing captures the fish again and takes it home to speak to his wife who doesn’t believe him. When she gets outside all that there is in the car is a minnow on the seat dead. Turing faces his wife and tells her he loves her. So, is it the love that is epigenetic (?). It starts off as undifferentiated events when younger and is fully formed when he can look at his wife and tell her truly how he feels. I don’t know.

To be fair, I didn’t really start to understand Everett’s novel Trees until I was three quarters of the way through it so why should I expect to understand these short stories on first reading?

I think there is a lot of subverting racial stereotypes in the book, maybe not in Epigenesis but it is there in others. It’s a book I will need to come back to and read again in the future to see if I understand more.