In Caroline Hagood' s GOBLIN MODE: A SPECULATIVE MEMOIR, the protagonist, who is and is not Caroline Hagood, takes a surreal odyssey through humor, horror, and plague-time Brooklyn. In a supercharged three-day stretch, she navigates a city full of flashers and parrots who talk to her on subways, makes an ominous visit to a bioluminescent bay in Fajardo, Puerto Rico at Christmastime, mothers two spirited children in an apartment that' s probably haunted, and lives in a world that may or may not be about to shut down. This state of goblin mode that she inhabits is metaphorical, said to have taken root since Covid and all the other sociopolitical unrest. But it' s also very real, in the form of an actual goblin that has been following her around since childhood, daring her to live more fiercely.