"Amina Cain is a beautiful writer. Like the girl in the rearview
mirror in your backseat, quiet, looking out the window half smiling,
then not, then glancing at you, curious to her. That is how her thoughts
and words make me feel, like clouds hanging with jets, and knowing love
is pure." --Thurston Moore
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, 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.