Near Flesh
Stories
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Dunn’s pieces have an almost irrepressible kinetic energy." —Alexandra Kleeman, The New York Times
A previously unpublished collection of stories about motherhood, violence, and desire, from the cult icon Katherine Dunn, the author of Geek Love.
A woman invests in a series of sex robots to get her off and comes to terms with the limitations—and real threat—of automated companionship. A knowing young student pursues an affair with an older man, the poet in residence at the university where she studies writing, and weighs the benefits and costs of their arrangement. A mother moves to a farm with her family and must come to terms with the violence simmering beneath her skin.
Near Flesh is the first and only collection of short fiction by Katherine Dunn, the author of the bestselling novel Geek Love. These nineteen stories are, like Dunn’s entire body of work, attuned to the spit and grit of tough living. They pulse with yearning for a more prosperous life, for sexual satisfaction, to escape abusive husbands and the disappointments of convention. A better life, for these mostly female protagonists, seems always just out of reach. In Near Flesh, Dunn explores the struggle of women to live on their own terms, and the desire to relish—rather than squash—what distinguishes a person.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This delightfully offbeat collection from Geek Love author Dunn (1945–2016) mixes tales of surprising encounters with those of unsettling dislocations. It begins with a series of flash fictions including "The Flautist," an evocative two-pager about a woman charmed by her flute-playing taxi driver on the way home from a classical concert. Darker tones imbue the longer stories. Thelma, the protagonist of the title entry, plans to celebrate her 42nd birthday by having sex with one of the four life-size robots she keeps in her closet. Angry and anxious over an upcoming business trip, she chooses a robot named the Wimp, built to withstand abuse ("she had saved the Wimp's purchase price several times over in repair bills"). Gilly, the protagonist of "The Well," is similarly wound tight, plagued by fear in the isolated new home she shares with her husband in Northern California, especially when he's away at work. Towered over by sequoias, Gilly feels like she's living at "the bottom of a well." Though some readers will grow weary of the recurring themes of anxiety and displacement, Dunn vividly captures her protagonists' attempts to cope with the turbulence of their lives. There are plenty of treasures on offer, even if the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
