See Through
Stories
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Heartbreaking and haunting, wholly inventive, the unforgettable stories of Nelly Reifler's debut collection, See Through, imagine a world where the emotional logic of our dreams and childhood fantasies rule our actions.
In the title story, an educated young woman sits behind the glass of a talk booth in a peep show and becomes a different girl for each man who visits. A thorn in a little girl's scalp becomes the physical locus for her painter father's grief and helplessness following his wife's leaving in "The Splinter." "Teeny" tells the story of an awkward, solitary pubescent girl who can't bring herself to perform the simple task of feeding the vacationing neighbors' cats. In "Baby," an infant asks his mother existential questions that are impossible to answer.
Nelly Reifler, winner of the Henfield/Transatlantic Review Prize for two of the stories in this collection, explores her characters' psyches and motivations with the precision of an anthropologist, detailing their physical urges and fears, and the desire, isolation, and violence that drive -- and sometimes consume -- them. But more than her desire to expose splintered personalities, Reifler plumbs the deep chasm between expectations and reality with infinite hope, warmth, and wisdom.
A powerful and extraordinary collection, See Through heralds the arrival of a significant new voice in contemporary fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With unflinching precision, Reifler's debut collection of 14 short stories examines young protagonists negotiating adult-governed worlds, often prematurely forced into brutal self-awareness. In "Teeny" a child is burdened with the adult responsibility of feeding the neighbor's pets before she's mature enough for the job. "Rascal," an edgier story, explores what happens when a teen too accustomed to "roughhousing" makes more than mischief with his hunting knife. Reifler's flair for portraying children processing the actions of adults is also on display in "Upstream," which depicts a boy coming to terms with his parent's divorce. When asked by his counselor why he likes monsters, the boy, still reeling from witnessing his father's infidelity, says, "People have to do what want or the people get killed...monsters don't have to explain themselves." Reifler also poignantly explores the fractured family in "The Splinter," about a father and daughter separated from the girl's mother, who come to a visceral understanding of their loss when the girl falls on a thorn on a Greek beach, and her father is unable to extract it. Other stand-outs: "Baby," a surreal fantasy about a mother coping with a sickly, preternaturally articulate infant; "Auditor," a dark comedy about a ruthless and misanthropic tax auditor; and the title story, about a stripper who can't make her work life mesh with her everyday life. A few stories are weaker, but most suggest that the perceptive Reifler is a writer to watch.
