In this collection of stories, critically acclaimed writer Cris Mazza shines a kleig light on the dark underside of relationships in a disturbing look at the ambiguous nature of our own desires. From women who foster their own abusive relationships, to failed suicide attempts, to furtive -- and horribly violent -- encounters in steamy basements, Mazza's stories cut to the heart of doomed human relationships, landing squarely in the murky territory between desire and despair, between freedom and loss of control.
In this collection of stories, critically acclaimed writer Cris Mazza shines a kleig light on the dark underside of relationships in a disturbing look...
From the author of Revelation Countdown and Animal Acts, this collection of short stories conveys a sens e of the bewilderment and excitement of sexual desires. '
From the author of Revelation Countdown and Animal Acts, this collection of short stories conveys a sens e of the bewilderment and excitement of sexua...
While in many ways reaffirming the mythic dimension of being on the road already romanticized in American pop and folk culture, "Revelation Countdown" also subtly undermines that view. These stories project onto the open road not the nirvana of personal freedom but rather a type of freedom more closely resembling loss of control. Being in constant motion and passing through new environments destabilizes life, casts it out of phase, heightens perception, skews reactions. Every little problem is magnified to overwhelming dimensions; events segue from slow motion to fast forward; background...
While in many ways reaffirming the mythic dimension of being on the road already romanticized in American pop and folk culture, "Revelation Countdown"...
Told in a broken shorthand voice, Mazza's language is acute, evoking a place where the patients, the caregivers, and the system are all disabled. Teri and Cleo are minimum-wage nurse-aides at a state ward for severely retarded and physically handicapped children. They are expected to feed, bathe, clothe, and carry out the required therapies for their patients in a 4-hour shift. They're working within a system where money for therapy is only continued if therapy shows improvement--and yet the state-paid therapists who oversee the ward know the patients will never show any improvement. To keep...
Told in a broken shorthand voice, Mazza's language is acute, evoking a place where the patients, the caregivers, and the system are all disabled. Teri...
As children, Tam and her older brother were swimming when she suffered her first epileptic seizure. He pulled her from the water and was crowned a hero. Tam was labeled "disabled" and never swam again. And so began 30 years of vigilance, never allowing her body to betray her, never allowing her brother or her family or anyone else to influence her path. Now, in middle age, a lifetime's worth of control has taken its toll. Exhausted, she heads to Maine where, while working on a genealogy project, she falls under the spell of two dead women: an ancestor, Mary Catherine, who died at 33; the...
As children, Tam and her older brother were swimming when she suffered her first epileptic seizure. He pulled her from the water and was crowned a her...
Cris Mazza's fiction has been called experimental, and stylistically it is, in the same way that Chekov's prose can be called experimental. Like the Russian author, Mazza uses an impressionistic technique to create characters so unusual, they become emblems for whole orders of social ills. Unfolding with the grim assurance of an autopsy, Girl Beside Him lays bare pathologies of self and society.
As the novel unfolds, a moody naturalist obsessed with target shooting meets his pretty assistant, rebounding from her bitter divorce, via a classified ad. Brian and Leya work together...
Cris Mazza's fiction has been called experimental, and stylistically it is, in the same way that Chekov's prose can be called experimental. Like the R...
