The Girl With Brown Fur: Tales & Stories
Stacey Levine
Language: English
Pages: 175
ISBN: 0984213341
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"Amid alarming depictions of domestic misery and perversion, strange metamorphoses, and imperiled nature, as well as the occasional triumphant escape or alliance, Levine declares the death of myth and anticipates the collapse of civilization. But for now, she subtly acknowledges that however deluded, poisoned, and impaired we may be, we will continue to tell and cherish tales and stories as we struggle against lies, brutality, and alienation."—Donna Seamen, Bookforum
The inhabitants of Stacey Levine's stories attempt each of these things and more, with no more success than people who have extramarital affairs or people who buy sports cars. Thankfully, Levine's stories have a refreshing lack of respect for reality.—The Believer
Levine's crisp stories similarly find excitement and transformation as they chase down their fantastical plots. The Girl with Brown Fur won't be everyone's cup of tea, but the adventurous will enjoy following Levine's breadcrumb trails, even if that means getting a little bit lost.—A.N. Devers, Time Out New York
In her first short fiction collection since My Horse and Other Stories, Stacey Levine gives us twenty-eight new, feral, untamable stories, in myriad modes, from laugh-out-loud funny, to Kafka-nightmarish, to lyrical, elegiac, and philosophical.
Stacey Levine is the author of My Horse and Other Stories (PEN/West Fiction Award, 1994) and the novels Dra— and Frances Johnson (finalist, Washington State Book Award, 2005).
Brother and me to desire something, anything, in the way of solace and succulence? Our family is sad and does not live in a verdant place. Distant snowaceous drifts, silhouettes of snow-burdened trees. The mountains which are ticking. We remain indoors, and the little valley below our cabin is ceaselessly untouched. Brother and I have an interview in the toilet. We must have it in us to relax—surely this is our atavistic right? But we are bound in a community tension and a stupendous threat the
Janice-Katie withdrew a cigarette. “If I turn away to a private world of my own,” Mrs. Beck said, “will I still be part of the common world?” Janice-Katie did not feel like giving Mrs. Beck the satisfaction of a reply. The older woman looked to the wall, groaning lightly, asking for a hairbrush, complaining that her nose hurt. Receding toward the kitchen storage area, private and alone, JaniceKatie inhaled, feeling wonderfully alive and strong. She was pleased that she needed so little medicine
from the sky; lines of dry snow caked the highway. Sheets of air flailed, expressing the same tumult again and again. Lady dropped her head, falling asleep. The car slunk up the hill, encased by snow. Lax looked down to his insubstantial pants legs, breathing fast, and he grew alarmed because, abruptly, he could not feel himself exist. He stopped the car, listening to sparks of ice on the roof, and beyond that, to saturations of silence that were too difficult to be lovely. He jiggled Lady’s
“Did you see those moles?” I asked Heather. She looked at me for moment, then swallowed icy wine. A group of college students from Simón Bolívar arrived, among them, 115 I heard someone say, the daughter of an American professor. She was shockingly pretty and energetic, with a dark, hanging wall of hair. She danced a bit next to her friends as they found drinks, and from her full, calm face, I decided that never once had she been seriously abandoned. In a few moments, the students noticed
“Ah,” Brook said, standing in the doorway, to the cats, and to her acute disappointments. “Ah,” she snapped. “I hate you.” “I hate you,” she thundered to both cats and the baker. “What will we do?” 28 The Bean Imagine being a bean: a pale supplicant, rimy dot, a belly-wrinkled pip, lying enervated on the kitchen chair, trying too hard all the time. He had a great green stalk of a father; steam from the oven reminded him of other beans who had died. What was it like, this propensity to roll,