Abigail Hamilton has photographed a number of weather-beaten or just beaten businesses in the outskirts of Seattle—evoking a post-apocalypse of the American dream. Next, she has colonized this bleak landscape with characters who speak in the terse idiom of haiku. In this way, the author distills the recommendations, observations, admonitions, instructions, recollections, and oracular pronouncements of the lost yet knowledgeable souls whom she imagines holding forth amidst the ruins. As others have done, Hamilton milks colloquialism and trash-culture for laughs, but the deceptively casual satire cannot conceal a humane meditation on the gap between illusion and reality, incidentally set in the rust belt of the Pacific Northwest. — Oliver Sacramento, October 04, 2004