Catching up on summer lit journals and loving the vibes…
“On the way back to her desk from the office cereal bar, winding past coworkers balancing bowls of oat milk and cocoa puffs, June’s thigh comes apart. Her pants keep her together, but there’s this puff of breath—a vacuum-sealed bag split open….”
Yes. This is about as engrossing and perfect an opening for which I could ever hope. Fang, you have me, you keep me. I’m in love with this short story. I do gravitate toward body narratives that explore the vulnerable, we all know this. Fang delivers and more.
“On her first day at the Harris School, seven-year-old Alice Elinor Hays told her seatmate Sadie at recess that she might as well begin by stating her situation, and laid out for her where she lived, her parents’ and housekeeper’s names, and that she intended to be class Monitor. After Sadie failed to respond, Alice conceded that that had been probably enough information for the time being, and that if Sadie or the boy beside her who was eavesdropping wanted to know more, they would each have to do without….”
Who doesn’t love a precocious, young, female character with the moxie of a Harper Lee character?
“A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!
Whether wrangling gators, playing gold, or organizing themselves into a hedgehog of pikes, men just love being together, being men together. like male bottlenose dolphins, they seek each other out. Men together, whitewater rafting. Men together, playing beach volleyball. Men together, tear-gassing protestors. Men together drilling for oil….”
I have a love for form and play on form. Ellmann delivers prosaic anaphora with lyricism. The wry, critical eye is delicious.
“Everything, as I remember, was like in my aunt’s paintings then, complete with tablecloths and chinaware and expensive little red jugs. I was on holiday at my aunt’s in Lagos, and her husband wanted to know if I’d seen the outline of her buttocks the previous afternoon. I was eleven, which made it 1983, November….”
I’ve heard poets speak about “the turn,” a moment from one line to the next in which the meaning holds its space within the reader’s mind and becomes something else, two things at once and then a culmination. I don’t know what the equivalent is in comedy, that moment when the story lands in something hilarious, situational and completely awkward and maybe inappropriate or more, this moment that immediately grounds the audience into feeling and striking memory perhaps held from their own memories, and so the comedic “turn,” if we can call it that, is grounding and delightful as much as it can be haunting. This opening in Abiodun’s story does this for me in a glorious way.
“Vivid…harrowing…lyrical, meticulous prose…bold, courageous.”
—Matt Bondurant, author of North Country,
Oleander City, The Night Swimmer, and Lawless
PRECIOUS UGLY BOOK LAUNCH & CONVERSATION
THE WILLIAM, NYC
AUGUST 20TH
Precious Ugly is a searing debut novel for readers of Bastard Out of Carolina and Demon Copperhead, a story about survival, set in the Reagan era—Clementine is a thirteen-year-old girl living in a van with her father, a preacher and cult leader, on a campsite along the river. She must decide if the miracle he promises will save her or destroy her.
Rae Cline is the author of the story collection The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, North American Review, StoryQuarterly and more. She is the founding editor of Eckleburg and lives in New York City. Precious Ugly is her debut novel. Read more at raecline.com.
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