all the Anxious girls on earth by Zsuzsi Gartner

I'm an anxious girl myself, so I figured this was my big chance to read about the others. It was fun.

Zsuzsi Gartner's girls are, for the most part, quirky, funny and dangerously close to being unsympathetic. But they are never dull. Except for the characters in the final story. For some reason I wasn't interested in the Oprah-esque media freak, nor in her uncomely, uncommunicative daughter/victim.

There is a self-aware poetic construction to Gartner's prose. I found it a bit jarring at first but quickly fell into her flow. By "City of my dreams" I was right into it. "Pest control for Dummies[TM]" is one of my favourites. It's a skillful mix of boyfriend Jack's point of view and Daisy's internal relationship with the fetus of her older brother, who died at birth.

Daisy tells the fetus about Jack. She tells what she considers the definitive story. Jack in a nutshell. The Compleat Jack, the ultimate psychological profile. "When I want him to do something he doesn't want to do, he always says, 'I'm thiry-two years old,' like it means something. I'll say, 'Check the expiry date on the mayonnaise,' and he'll say, 'I'm thirty-two years old,' and start spreading it on the bread without checking the date. So I'll grab the jar to check the date and he'll grab it back and I'll grab it again, and then he'll..." Daisy notices that the fetus doesn't appear to be listening. He's wrapping the umbilical cord around his left wrist and then tugging on it as if to test for tensile strength. He must feel her watching, because he suddenly looks dead at her. His eyes large and swampy. Bayou eyes. Daisy hears a crooked accordion, the snap of alligator teeth. "I can't really relate. I have no concept of age or time," the fetus says. Her heart splays.

This parargraph made me laugh out loud. It still does as I read it again. It's a good example of how cool and original Gartner's writing is -- what she notices, which details are important, and the... delicate precision of her odd words.

---

Leave a comment

name
email (if you want to be notified)
<-- Please retype the word you see here:
Notify me when someone replies to this post?

---