Description
A bride on her honeymoon eats her husband; a young boy’s dreams materialize to save him from bullies; a daughter recalls a family vacation that felt more like a kidnapping; a feral cat identifies with an unruly girl whose father attempts to isolate and tame her. In Shiny Girl (Inch #60), relationships evolve or devolve, as quickly as a match struck and blown out, and love mostly remains aspirational: as trial, magic trick, prison, or the fairy tale one wants to believe. The stories that happen to both humans and animals are arranged chronologically (youth to old age), focusing on characters who, though often self-sabotaging, are ultimately insightful and resilient. Whatever their impediments and diminished circumstances, these characters find ways to persist and bloom, sometimes through insight and pluck, sometimes because of the fairy tales they tell themselves or attempt to live.
Marianne Gingher has published seven books. Her novel Bobby Rex’s Greatest Hit was made into an NBC movie, and she has published widely in magazines and periodicals including the Oxford American, Southern Review, New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Magazine, Our State, and O. Her latest books are Adventures in Pen Land, a comic memoir about the writing life, and two anthologies for which she served as editor: Long Story Short, and Amazing Place, both published by UNC Press. In 2009, with writer friend Deborah Seabrooke, she co-founded Jabberbox Puppet Theater and the collaborators wrote, built, and performed salon-style puppet theater in Greensboro, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Wilmington, North Carolina for ten years.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.