The Iliac Crest
Books | Fiction / Gothic
3.6
Cristina Rivera Garza
Surreal and gothic, The Iliac Crest is a masterful excavation of forgotten Mexican women writers, illustrating the myriad ways that gendered language can wield destructive power. On a dark and stormy night, two mysterious women invade an unnamed narrator’s house, where they proceed to ruthlessly question their host’s identity. The women are strangely intimate―even inventing together an incomprehensible, fluid language―and harass the narrator by repeatedly claiming that they know his greatest secret: that he is, in fact, a woman. As the increasingly frantic protagonist fails to defend his supposed masculinity, he eventually finds himself in a sanatorium. Published for the first time in English, this Gothic tale is “utterly weird yet deeply resonant in its portrayal of gendered violence” (The Millions). Through layered and haunting prose, Cristina Rivera Garza unravels the cultural and political histories of Mexico, probing at the misogyny that fuels the disappearance of women in literature and in real life. "Astounding and thought-provoking." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “An intelligent, beautiful story about bodies disguised as a story about language disguised as a story about night terrors. Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Kingdom Cons
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More Details:
Author
Cristina Rivera Garza
Pages
200
Publisher
Feminist Press at CUNY
Published Date
2017-10-16
ISBN
1936932067 9781936932061
Community ReviewsSee all
"This is a short read, but denser than I even know as I do not have first hand familiarity with Amparo Davila’s work (if i could read this for the first time again, i would read her short stories first). I definitely advise, if you are reading the English translation, that you read both the Afterword and Translator’s Note as they offer more context if you did not research prior to or throughout the reading. The atmosphere she creates and the absolutely perfection of surreality, yet logic within it, is striking. I wish this was longer so that I could stay in her world, but luckily she has more books I have yet to read."
C
CaitVD
"i'd have to say Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor!"
A W
Anthony Wells
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