Slut Lullabies
By Gina Frangello
(Emergency Press, Paperback, 9780975362372, 204pp.)
Publication Date: June 1, 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook
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Description
Following her debut novel, My Sister's Continent, which delved "fearlessly into questions of identity, abuse...trust, trespass, and delusion" (Booklist), Gina Frangello continues her exploration of the power dynamics of gender, class, and sexuality in this collection of diverse, vibrant short fiction. Slut Lullabies is unsettling. Like the experience of reading a private diary, these stories leave one feeling slightly traitorous while also imprinting a deep recognition of truths you did not know you felt.
It is through beauty, horror, humor and chaos that Frangello has managed to pull these ten stories out of her deep understanding of the human experience. A gay Latino man whose pious relatives are boycotting his `commitment ceremony' becomes caught up in hypocrisy and splendor when his lover's Waspy mother hires a glitzy wedding coordinator; a precocious girl seduces her teacher in order to blackmail him into funding her young stepmother's escape from their violent home; a wife turns to infidelity and drugs to distract her from chronic pain following an accident; a teenage boy attempts atonement in Amsterdam after having exploited his naive girlfriend at home; and a socialite must confront her dark past as her husband's deterioration from Huntington's Disease destroys both her bank account and social standing.
Each insightfully drawn, deeply felt character moves delicately amid the despair and wreckage of ordinary life, but always towards hope. And Frangello's oddly uplifting voice acts as the unifying thread, drawing out a beauty and dimension which demands both our criticism and our empathy.
It is through beauty, horror, humor and chaos that Frangello has managed to pull these ten stories out of her deep understanding of the human experience. A gay Latino man whose pious relatives are boycotting his `commitment ceremony' becomes caught up in hypocrisy and splendor when his lover's Waspy mother hires a glitzy wedding coordinator; a precocious girl seduces her teacher in order to blackmail him into funding her young stepmother's escape from their violent home; a wife turns to infidelity and drugs to distract her from chronic pain following an accident; a teenage boy attempts atonement in Amsterdam after having exploited his naive girlfriend at home; and a socialite must confront her dark past as her husband's deterioration from Huntington's Disease destroys both her bank account and social standing.
Each insightfully drawn, deeply felt character moves delicately amid the despair and wreckage of ordinary life, but always towards hope. And Frangello's oddly uplifting voice acts as the unifying thread, drawing out a beauty and dimension which demands both our criticism and our empathy.
About the Author
Gina Frangello is the author of the critically acclaimed novel My Sister’s Continent. She is the executive editor and co-founder of Other Voices Books and the editor of the fiction section at The Nervous Breakdown.She lives in Chicago with her husband, twin daughters and son, and teaches at Columbia College and Northwestern University.
Praise For Slut Lullabies…
"Gina Frangello's Slut Lullabies will seduce you." - Vanity Fair, June, 2010Slut Lullabies is beautiful, daring, triumphant. Gina's writing is fearless and original and kind and there simply aren't enough books like this.
- Stephen Elliott, The Adderall Diaries
"Savvy, sexy, blunt stories that keep inviting a reader in. Frangello's voice feels like a friend you've known for years, telling you stories with warmth and insight."
- Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures
"Gina Frangello is unafraid to look hard at the dark side of human nature, but she writes with such compassion and humor that we come away from these fictions with new insight into the strange world we all live in. You lift your head from this book dazed and blinking in new light. These are jaw-dropping stories."
- Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply
"Slut Lullabies is daring short fiction at its finest; it explores the full range of modern life -- from love to sex to illness to family -- with all the refinement and frankness of Anaïs Nin. If you have any question about the future of the short story, this beguiling collection is its formidable answer."
- Joe Meno, The Great Perhaps
"Frangello writes with great wit and pathos about a remarkable range of human dynamics. Slut Lullabies dazzles and surprises with its scope and invention."
- Jonathan Evison, All About Lulu
"Simply put, Gina Frangello is a fearless writer, unafraid to show us the raw and real ways we deal with each other, and with ourselves, and the stories in Slut Lullabies are no exception. Her richly developed characters are alive and breathing in these beautiful, sometimes brutal stories, and her powers of observation about the human psyche are alarmingly dead on."
- Elizabeth Crane, You Must Be This Happy to Enter
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