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Senseless Women
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
Series: Juniper Prize for Fiction
208 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 x 0.70 in
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Exploring the darker side of optimism, Sarah Harris Wallman's debut collection shows women attempting to build durable havens from reality, struggling to keep relationships intact, and reinventing themselves. A lonely music teacher at a Nashville Christian academy awaits the miracle of love; a Jane Doe recalls the affair that sustained, and ended, her; a new mother brings life into the world during a bleak election party; young girls are exploited by a nightclub owner in death, as in life. Alone or in weird sisterhood, some of these women are senseless because they refuse to feel, others because they've been deprived of stimuli and attention. As these twelve stories prove, there's no sensible way to fall in love, raise children, or escape. This is Senseless Women.
The The Dead Girls Show 1
One Car Hooks into the Next and Pulls 22
North of Eden 36
The Malanesian 41
Junk Food 61
Only Children 76
Dusty Hunting 97
Forbidden Fruit 102
Waiting for the Miracle: Scenes from the New Brochure 122
The Dog Sense 149
Senseless Women 166
Birth Stories 185
Acknowledgments 199
One Car Hooks into the Next and Pulls 22
North of Eden 36
The Malanesian 41
Junk Food 61
Only Children 76
Dusty Hunting 97
Forbidden Fruit 102
Waiting for the Miracle: Scenes from the New Brochure 122
The Dog Sense 149
Senseless Women 166
Birth Stories 185
Acknowledgments 199
SARAH HARRIS WALLMAN's stories have been published in such venues as Hobart and the Masters Review, and have won awards from Prada and the Tucson Festival of Books. She grew up in Nashville and currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is codirector of the MFA program in writing at Albertus Magnus College.
"Being a woman is no walk in the park in this debut collection of intricately plotted, sometimes fabulist stories . . . [This is] imaginative work that shows how much women deserve better plots."—Kirkus Reviews
"[B]ewitching and macabre . . . Wallman's incisive writing and bold choices make this memorable and worthwhile."—Publishers Weekly
"The dead commingle with the living in these stories, the animate with the inanimate, the mythic with the literal, the comedic with the grave. Vibrant, wounded, bewildered people somehow find their way through the carnival of twenty-first century America—land of Dino-Golf and Slip 'N Slide and vending machines and Zoinks. Senseless Women is a marvel."—Noy Holland, Juniper Prize for Fiction judge and author of I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like
"The stories in Senseless Women are sharp, pushing at the edges of reality to highlight the delightful absurdities of contemporary life. Just when you think you have this collection nailed down, it offers an unexpected pivot or yet another heartbreakingly perfect sentence. With a wonderful sense of variety and a wry sense of humor, Sarah Harris Wallman expertly maps out the madness, joy, and complexities of belonging."—Robert Yune, author of Impossible Children
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