Winner of the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize
A darkly comical horror lurks beneath the surface of everyday events
in Refrigerated Music for a Gleaming Woman, a seductively poetic story
collection of unusual brilliance and rare humor.
In Aimee Parkison's Refrigerated Music for a Gleaming Woman, lovers
find unexpected romance in cramped spaces, fast food addicts struggle
through cheeseburger addiction, and the splendor of nature competes with
the violence of television. All the while, a complicated and precarious
present dawns onto a new world where wealthy women wear children's eyes
as jewelry and those in need of money hawk their faces only to forever
mourn what parts of themselves they have sold to survive.
Open the refrigerator door. Inside are antique jars. Open them to hear
the music: Beethoven playing piano; slaves singing for freedom in
plantation fields; mothers humming lullabies through the night to
smallpox babies, knowing this song is the last sound their children will
ever hear.
As Stephen Graham Jones notes in his foreword to this prize-winning
collection, "The best books . . . fold you into a darkness sparkling
with life. They lock you in the refrigerator but they also pipe in some
music that never repeats, and when the door starts to open, you cling
tight to it, so you can have just a few minutes more. This book, it'll
be over far too fast for you, yes. But even were it five times as thick
as it is now, it would still be too short. Remember, though, the best
books, they're loops. They never stop. This one still hasn't, for me."
