The Only Thing I Have
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
“In succinct, Carveresque prose, Waterfall creates remarkable protagonists obsessed with starlet pixies, squash, lost infants, pregnant throats, ghosts in telephone poles and above all the sheer longing requisite in being alive.”—Adam Lewis Schroeder, author of Kingdom of Monkeys
Rhonda Waterfall evokes A.M. Homes and Alice Munro in these unsettling, evocatively written stories about domestic dysfunction. In them, life unfolds in odd, unpredictable ways: a murderous plot is revealed through Post-It notes, a film director will do anything to recapture his lost youth, and an elderly woman finds the love of a child in a marrow squash.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If they existed in real life, most of the characters populating Waterfall's debut would be in mental hospitals or intense therapy-they swallow plum pits and imagine they are growing roots, chop off their own verbally abusive toes, and adopt squash as babies. Revealed in fashionably understated prose, these oddball tales fall squarely into the realm of young fiction stylists like Miranda July, Tao Lin, and Aimee Bender, but further distilled; most of the stories last just a few pages. Though it feels limited as a method, the precarious balance between austere writing and outrageous subject grows more hypnotic and enjoyable as it goes; before long, the quickly progressing freak show begins, paradoxically, to feel plausibly lived-in. How much these stories have to say about actual people is debatable: the focus is narrowed to emotionally damaged, nearly sociopathic individuals who have lots of anonymous sex, minimal self-reflection, and little empathetic awareness. Still, they make an interesting bunch, and Waterfall's slim collection doesn't give them the chance to overstay their welcome.
