Redoubt

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY OCT 1, 2004

In a small fortress, in the middle of the desert, a guard keeps watch for the enemy, recording every shift of light and temperature in a meticulous field log. "The days here pass without a mummer," the guard notes, and in his (her?) isolation he (she?) is thrust back upon his (her?) own dreams and doubts. Such is the premise of Pineda's latest "mononovel"-a short, intense work told entirely from the point of view of an ambiguously gendered guard. Fans of Pineda's previous works (Bardo99, Fishlight, Face, etc.) will recognize the author's telescopic focus on the minutia of physical sensation and intangible thought. "I am trying as much as is in my power to write something in contrast to writing about something," Pineda once explained to the Bloomsbury Review. And she deftly conveys the emotions of monotony, anxiety and loneliness her narrator experiences-an accomplishment that actually turns into this book's greatest liability. For in writing monotony and isolation rather than writing "about" monotony and isolation, Pineda creates a book that is monotonous, oppressive and completely unleavened by humor. Fans of Samuel Beckett and Antonin Artaud may not mind the recoil of such sharp aim, but others may decide that this mononovel's theoretical abstractions are far more interesting than its contents.