The Lost Daughter Collective
An experimental novella about the loss at the center of mother-daughter relations and the fractures of a community. Fragmented viewpoints and uncertain narration probe the boundary between loss and renewal.
Work Information
Fragmented narration slowly brings the shape of loss into view.
An experimental novella that follows the loss at the heart of mother-daughter relations and the cracks in a community. The uncertainty of the narration itself becomes part of the loss.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Dzanc Books
- Published
- 2017-03-07
- Pages
- 169 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.97 x 1.27 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781941088739
- ISBN-10
- 1941088732
- Price
- 3232 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
Using bedtime stories as cautionary tales, a Wrist Scholar relays the story of a fabled group of fathers coping with dead and missing daughters. When the girl sacrifices everything to send a final message to her father through her art and one lost girl is revealed to be not dead or missing but a daughter who has transitioned into a son, fathers are faced with the reality that their childrens ?play is anything but. Caught in a strange loop that?like Eschers ?Drawing Hands?confuses the line between reality and artifice, folklore and scholarship, far past and near future, The Lost Daughter Collective illustrates how the stories we receive are shaped by those who do the telling. A story about the complex relationship between fathers and daughters as well as the ethics of storytelling, The Lost Daughter Collective is a gothic fairy tale fusing the fabulism at work in Donald Barthleme and Ben Marcus with the brevity and language play of Rikki Ducornet and Jenny Offill to raise questions about agency and authorship in our narratives.
Lindsey Drager is the author of The Sorrow Proper (Dzanc, 2015), winner of the 2016 Binghamton University / John Gardner Fiction Award. Originally from Michigan, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the College of Charleston, where she teaches in the MFA program in fiction.
Reviews
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Exploring the liminal
This work is perhaps an ode to the liminal - Drager is most at home capturing and inferring meaning from states of change. Sharp prose defines a hazy, almost Murakami-esque world; her vignettes are most akin to the fleeting dream state - somehow both vividly defined and fitful - in-between snooze button and wakefulness. There's a gift here to the careful reader; the author has the gift of weaving unadorned verbiage into achingly poignant turns of phrase. Indeed, this work is literature as sociology as art - acting as the impartial observer, Drager somehow manages to imbue even the smallest of moments with great import; this is a master observer, transmuting even minute gestures in conversation to moments of punctuation in grand soliloquy. Drager tips her hand - perhaps unintentionally - with the Alice in Wonderland themes. Alice was not only a lost daughter; her journey down the rabbit hole led her to a study of wonderment, of the remarkable, of that which is perhaps not what it appears to be. Drager has that same slightly wide-eyed perspective of the world, betraying her wonderment with trenchant analysis of the seemingly mundane. Truly an enjoyable read, especially the deceptively clear prose; gossamer layers covering a scalpel.
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Sad but lovely book
Sad but lovely book. You don't need to have suffered a loss to relate. This book speaks to everyone. Touching.
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Interesting, fairy tale-like story, about the loss of daughters, and the effect on those left behind
Interesting book, written in a fairy tale-like prose, which tells the stories of fathers who have lost their daughters, and how they deal with their grief. Beautifully written - an engaging story that makes you think.
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Plenty of food fir thought.
Not as forthright as her first offering, this second novel offers plenty of food for thought which is Drager's best aspect. Recommended.
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Great!
A book you will not want to put down....Great!