Kathryn Davis, “Body-without-Soul”

Two snapshots from “”Body-without-Soul,” by Kathryn Davis

Eager for more? Read the whole story, coming next month in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer of Fairy Tale Review.

t was a suburban street, one block long, the houses made of brick and built to last like the third little pig’s.  Sycamore trees had been planted at regular intervals along the curb and the curbs themselves sparkled; I think the concrete was mixed with mica in it.  I think the street was so new it couldn’t help but draw attention to itself. The families living on the street came from all over, but the children had no trouble forming friendships, the boys’ based on rough-housing and ballgames, the girls’ on a series of strategic moves, tireless linkings and unlinkings, the bonds double, triple, covalent like molecules.  “Heads up!” the boys would yell when a car appeared, interrupting their play; the girls sat on the porch stoops, cigar boxes of trading cards and stickers in their laps, making deals.  School was about to start.  The darkness welled up so gradually the only way anyone could tell night had fallen was the fireflies, prickling like light on water.  The parents were inside, presumably keeping an eye on their children but also drinking highballs.  Fireflies like falling stars, the tree trunks narrow as the girls’ waists.

Occasionally something different occurred.  Continue reading »

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Celebrate! A new novel by Per Petterson

Not since Sebald has an author revitalized our sense of what’s possible in modern fiction as Per Pettersen has, in the humble opinion of Little Star.  In prose so simple as to be almost invisible, he renders characters (usually just one) who are achingly human in their moral limitations and yet panoramically aware. I Curse the River of Time, published today, brings us a man who cannot seem quite to grow into his middle age as he navigates the mortal illness of his mother, a presence who is painfully near, yet painfully unknown. As always the simplicity and clarity of the Scandinavian landscape elevate the scene to a universal stillness. Here are a few lines from a remembered journey with a girl to a remote cabin in the off season:

The rowing boat was fibreglass and rode too high in the water, if you ask me, and did not pick up the momentum it could have had when finally I fell into a rhythm I thought was good, unlike a wooden dinghy. So I struggled to keep her in a straight line, and I started to sweat, and frankly, it annoyed me. I saw her face flushed in the cold air and her eager eyes following the shiny line and the white scrubbed water, and along the shore there was a fog still drifting among the trees and turning them into mythical creatures from some heathen past. A pale rose streak was floating above the red cabins along the bay and from behind the sun was breaking through, and why so annoyed, I thought, this is fine, this is so fine, you could not have wished for better, why should you not sweat a little.

“Jesus, this boat is hard work,” I said.

“I know,” she said, “they’re like that, these fibreglass boats, they’re really too light.” Continue reading »

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