Creature

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Amina Cain's Creature brings together short fictions set in the space between action and reflection, edging at times toward the quiet and contemplative, at other times toward the grotesque or unsettling. Like the women in Jane Bowles's work, Cain's narrators seem always slightly displaced in the midst of their own experiences, carefully observing the effects of themselves on their surroundings and of their surroundings on themselves. Other literary precursors might include Raymond Carver and John Cage, some unlikely concoction of the two, with Carver's lucid prose and instinct for the potency of small gestures and Cage's ability to return the modern world to elementary principles. These stories offer not just a unique voice but a unique narrative space, a distinct and dramatic rendering of being-in-the-world.From Publishers WeeklyCain's latest book, after I Go to Some Hollow, is a moody, enigmatic collection of 14 miniature stories, some as short as four pages. In one, a former cult victim recalls her abuse; in another, a woman enters into a three-way relationship with a married couple. Each narrator seems to have undergone trauma or something akin to it—unease, illness, adulthood—and so their streams of consciousness have the texture of recovery. Cain captures a particular kind of attempt at happiness: trying to be easy on oneself; praying at a Zen monastery; focusing on small pleasures like orchids and neatly folded towels. Perhaps that's why, in both form and content, so much here is microscopic, with a delicate sadness infusing mundane activities like bathing, spilling olive oil, and touching a wall. At times, this mélange of fragments produces the atmosphere of a whole, but at others the bits seem disconnected and the search for meaning desultory. But Cain's tone—unknowing, exhibiting the most awed reverence toward the smallest details of life and thought—remains wonderfully effective throughout, though one sometimes wishes she'd use it on richer content. It lingers after the pages are done, leaving an aftertaste that's somehow more pleasant than the experience itself. (Nov.) About the AuthorAmina Cain writes stories that revolve quietly around human relationality, landscape, and emptiness. She is also a curator and a teacher of writing/literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as 3rd Bed, DENVER QUARTERLY, La Petite Zine, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA PROJECT, and Action, Yes. She is the author of I GO TO SOME HOLLOW (Les Figues Press, 2009) and CREATURE (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2013). She lives and works in Los Angeles.