In The Body
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An unflinching look at the human body and the ways it defines, fails, and frees us
Building on themes introduced in her novel Girl in Shades, Allison Baggio explores the connection between the physical and spiritual worlds with In the Body, a collection of 12 short stories and the novella “As She Was.”
Baggio’s range of voice and breadth of vision are showcased in stories like “Spilt Milk,” where an ordinary fare leads an Indo–Canadian taxi driver, who is unhappy with his current circumstances, to marry his passenger’s unattractive sister. In “Possessed,” a man receives a heart transplant and begins to suspect that his new heart is still attached to its old owner.
The novella follows a teenage girl who, after a motorcycle accident, is left with a serious brain injury that dramatically alters her personality and body. The five people closest to her must reflect on who she was in order to come to terms with who she has become.
In the Body is a stunning examination of the clash between how we perceive our own bodies and how we are perceived by others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This impressive collection of 12 short stories and one novella from Baggio (Girl in Shades), linked by the theme of the connection between body and soul, investigates how people react during critical junctures in their lives. "With Daddy," for example, shows a man, kicked out of the house by his wife, kidnapping their young daughter. "Mom said that his beer was the main reason he had to leave," the child tells us. "That it was the biggest problem. That's ridiculous, I had said to her. Beer is not a problem; it's just a fizzy drink in a can." In "Birthday Boy," the mother of a 19-year-old Vietnam War draftee cannot bear to see him go and acts drastically to stop him. And in "One Too Many," a woman struggles with her fianc 's bizarre desire to lose a leg. "From the time I was a boy," he tells her, "I never felt right having the left one." Though the concluding novella, "As She Was," about a high-school student seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, presents a richer array of characters than the preceding stories, it suffers from weak pacing. Baggio's shorter efforts remain this book's most substantial achievement.
