A new story collection from Jennifer Fliss, author of The Predatory
Animal Ball
Who has a right to tell us how to experience our grief? How to
perform--or not perform--the roles society prescribes to us based on our
various points of identity?
As If She Had a Say, the second story collection from Jennifer Fliss,
uses an absurdist lens to showcase characters--predominantly
women--plumbing their resources as they navigate misogyny, abuse, and
grief. In these stories, a woman melts in the face of her husband's
cruelty; a seven-tablespoons-long woman lives inside a refrigerator and
engages in an affair with the man of the house; a balloon-animal artist
attends a funeral to discover he was invited as more than entertainment;
and a man loses all his nouns.
Fans of Karen Russell and Carmen Maria Machado will appreciate how As
If She Had a Say's inventive narratives expose inequities by taking us
on imaginative romps through domesticity and patriarchal expectations.
Each story functions as a magnifying glass through which we might
examine our own lives and see ourselves more clearly.
