レビュー要約

• 大胆な比喩と不穏な美しさが評価されている。グロテスクな想像力に強く惹かれる読者がいる一方、身体表現の強度には好みが分かれる。

レビュー

• A surreal stunner of a debut!

  This is the first book that I have read in a long while that I can truly say is addictive. Sarah Rose Etter has written a piece of work that I literally struggled to put down. Cassie has a knot for a stomach. Not 'in' her stomach but born, body-tied at the centre where her belly should be. Just like her mother and grandmother. Sounds surreal? It is. But that's nothing. She helps her father and brother mining in the family meat quarry. She walks down corridors of wet walls, glistening red and marbled with fat. Cassie plunges her arms, elbow-deep to pull out bloodied meat the size of boulders for her father to sell. She has visions: fields of throats and rivers of thighs. Heads are removed to watch their own bodies. Her jealousy is taken away in a removal shop, cut out like a cancerous tumour. She buys half a man because she doesn't have enough money for a full one. The men she meets in her real life are not good to her when they discover her knot. She's treated like a freak, abused and left mentally dead. She's does eventually fall in love, but things are far from perfect. Everything in this book is disturbing and off-kilter, as if Cassie has been dropped into a Salvador Dali painting. It's a wonderfully layered and brutally surreal book. It takes on the agonies and trials of a young woman growing up; it could also be seen as the struggle of chronic illness. Split into 4 parts, and rather than chapters, it's written in very readable chunks of narrative, dreams, visions and fact lists. This format only adds to its addictive and waking-nightmare quality. Highly recommended if you like your fiction surreal, dark and experimental. If you're easily disturbed then this may not be for you. But Sarah Rose Etter nails it all perfectly in her wonderful debut novel.

• A necessary and important read soaked in the sorrows of women for generations.

  A necessary and important read-Etter's book is soaked in the sorrows of women for generations. Heavy in raw imagery and the routines of life, this books runs parallel to the pulse of women and lives and heartbreaks all ending in a climax that will leave the reader haunted but fulfilled.

• Knot for me

  I’m not really sure I got it, it was perhaps a bit surreal for my taste but some of the imagery didn’t really hit with me. I think a similar story set in a more familiar setting would have probably struck deeper for me but factors like the money, the quarry and difficulty picturing ‘the knot’ took me away from being immersed in the story. I probably wouldn’t revisit this style of book but having read other work by the same author, would definitely be interested in future books!

• fascinating style - how did i miss this one?

  i was born with a knot in my intestines (unlike the characters in the novel mine was thankfully inside my body) so i had to read it. but i was pretty impressed with the style and magical realism tone. i will read her again with or without knots. a bit dark but life often is.

• Weird.

  I didn’t like this book! I read a few good reviews and hoped to find it just as revealing and rich. Instead, it’s just really, really, odd.

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