Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
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Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts by Claire Donato
In the disquieting stories of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, a fractaled Claire Donato contemplates grief and disgust in heterosexuality, deconstructing the romance myth and the illicit fantasies which reflect our haunted selves. These fictions are populated with Lynchian characters, draped in memory and the subconscious mind, who imagine their way out of the painful limits of their world: a turtle retreats into its shell and becomes a real girl. A porn addict turns into a baby boy in the arms of his barren cyber-girlfriend. And a digitally-marred depressive joins forces with the ghost of Simone Weil to kill a chicken. Donato's fictions are precise and cutting, seamlessly integrating a vast knowledge of art through sharp criticism and a history of cult traditions: Donnie Darko, Wings of Desire, Daisies, and Twin Peaks and artists including Clarice Lispector, M.F.K. Fisher, Sibylle Baier, and The Velvet Underground. Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts concludes with 'Gravity and Grace, the Chicken and the Egg, or: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian', a novella-in-vignettes that frames cooking as an entrypoint to light, awareness, and connection. With associative lyricism and a preternatural ability to gaze into the void with tenderness, Donato relays an indescribably strange perception of our world, in which maniacal grief turns to a gleeful protest before becoming, against all odds, a love letter to what remains.
Donato, Claire: - Claire Donato is the author of the novel BURIAL, from Tarpaulin Sky Press. She grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her fiction, poetry, and lyric essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Boston Review, Encyclopedia, Evening Will Come, LIT, Octopus, and 1913: A JOURNAL OF FORMS. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, Someone Else's Body (Cannibal Books, 2009), and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She teaches at Fordham University in the Bronx and has taught at The New School, Hunter College, and 826 Valencia/NYC.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781648230394 |
| ISBN 10 | 1648230393 |
| Title | Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts |
| Author | Claire Donato |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | powerHouse Books,U.S. |
| Year published | 2023-12-21 |
| Number of pages | 250 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |