{ WE TAKE ME APART a novel(la) by Molly Gaudry
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$12 BUY [ novel(la), 118 pgs., perfect-bound ]
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advance praise :
There is no more perfect place to be than in Molly Gaudry’s tender, dirt-floored novel(la), WE TAKE ME APART. Oh cabbage leaves, oh roses, oh orange-slice childhood grins: this book broke my heart. Its sad memory-tropes come from fairy tales & childhood books. With language, Gaudry is as loving & careful as one is with a matchbook . . . when wishing to set the whole word on fire.
Kate Bernheimer
Molly Gaudry’s debut evokes the spirit of iconic fairy tales that have transported readers for centuries. Her variations on these themes delineate the psychological journey from girlhood to womanhood. But WE TAKE ME APART is more than a retelling. In it, Gaudry reconstitutes the essence of what makes fairy tales compelling, & she does so imaginatively & with great attention to language, the earmarks of poetry.
Christopher Kennedy
an excerpt :
long ago in a different version it was not a glass slipper but a glass dress it was not beautiful it was not flowing like a stream it did not have a train wider than an acre in this version everyone could see everything nothing was left to the imagination due to the drought all the people in the town children too used their spades to uproot the vegetable gardens day after day after day the day finally came when all they could do was look into the cloudiness & pray disgraced for why else would the gray lining of their clear sky withhold unless it had been decided that the only useful thing was for them to suffer there was not so much as a cabbage leaf that year cold came to be known as night heaviness was no longer a worry the town turned to violence a rich man's cook was discovered making sauce in the heart of his house as everyone knows that food does not smell until it boils until it sweats the people still there who had not yet gone away their bellies round with malnutrition tongues useless calluses detected that woman's sauce came for her with a knife the first ingredient they added was her toe cut at a neat incline they called it butter they added her bottom half called it custard her top half they called tea when she cried they heard only the whistles of their stomachs filled with her they raised their glasses toasted * this is the story Mother told to get me to behave tucked into my bedding I once asked BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GIRL IN THE GLASS DRESS & Mother's answer was JUST COUNT YOUR LUCKY STARS YOU'RE SAFE IN BED & NOT A COOK FOR A RICH MAN the way he made her feel the way he looked at her she left nothing to the imagination |
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