This review first appeared on The Spinoff on 27 April 2017.
Roxane Gay is good at opening sentences. Examples from her first short story collection, Difficult Women: “The stone thrower lives in a glass house with his glass family.” “When I was a young girl, my husband’s father flew an air machine into the sun.” And my favourite: “We are having a heated debate about whether or not yogurt can expire when my husband suggests we stay together but see other people.”
On 19 December 2016 (stepping out of my comfort zone somewhat!) I reviewed Desire: 100 of Literature’s Sexiest Stories chosen by Mariella Frostrup and the Erotic Review on RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme.
You can listen to the review here.
This review first appeared on The Spinoff on 19 May 2016.
“It is possible to say it,” says one of Tracey Slaughter’s narrators in deleted scenes for lovers, steeling herself to name the cancer that is eating her body from the inside. She can’t bring herself to say it to anyone at the party she’s hosting, but she names it to herself, learning against the bathroom wall, drunk, after an ambiguous encounter with her boss, “feeling it move in her mouth the way it’s moved in her body.” The reader knows exactly what the diagnosis is, but Slaughter never puts the word on the page.
Continue reading “Review: deleted scenes for lovers by Tracey Slaughter”
