I should have saved this for October. I’d read the first story in this collection, “The Husband Stitch,” before, and it was even more beautiful and creepy than I’d remembered. The rest of the stories don’t let up: women encounter horrors but maybe it’s in their heads; women focus on relationships even as the world is ending; women try to cling to reality as it dissolves around them; women carve their bodies into ideals and are haunted by what they’ve cut away. The more you read, the more ghosts seem to gather softly around you until you have to put the book down, before you get too deep in your head and start doubting yourself and what’s around you.