Kind mirrors, ugly ghosts / Claire Donato

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Donato, Claire, author.

Contributor:

Class of 1932 Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Short stories, American--21st century.

Short stories, American.

American fiction.

Genre:

Fiction

Fiction.

Physical Description:

215 pages : illustrations ; 18 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Brooklyn, New York : Archway Editions, [2023]

Summary:

"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"-- Publisher's website.

Contents:

Preface

Colour green

The only person you hurt is yourself

The Analyst

A story about a naked girl in a snow globe on the shelf of an American Multinational Retail Corporation

If anybody could have saved me it would have been you

A story about a turtle who retreats into her shell and becomes a real girl

Captive father

My ex-partner's doppelgänger

David

The runaway bunny

11:11

Cousins

Donnie Darko

Cut flowers

The third

Spores

Preacher

Empathy

Love letter

My albatross

Bone piece

Gravity and grace, the chicken and the egg, or: how to cook everything vegetarian: a novella

Acknowledgments

Works cited.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1932 Fund.

ISBN:

9781648230394

1648230393

OCLC:

1370000866

Publisher Number:

99995647004