I must confessed I missed the apparent virality of The Feminist, the opening short story in Tony Tulathimutte’s debut collection, but I can’t say it surprises me in hindsight. It fits in that Cat Person vein, something that allows everyone to confront the horrors of straight white men online whilst patting themselves on the back for being better than them. It’s interesting, then, how Tulathimutte uses that as a seed for the remaining stories, each building on that in some way thematically and narratively to implicate all of us in the same base, repulsive instincts. There’s some formal experimentation, which is fun, and one story (no spoilers) has such a beautiful example of a narrative trick that I genuinely laughed out loud on a train at the gumption of it all. Very excited for more.