akj002's review against another edition
fast-paced
3.0
creepy and funny, but I probably won't remember these stories.
kiramke's review against another edition
3.0
Very cohesive collection of bonkers stories. I very much wish I had read one story a week, maybe less, and let it fester. I think they are simultaneously very good and less impactful than I wanted them to be. Might be a book I'll page through again and revise my opinion of, someday.
3.5, which means I liked it.
3.5, which means I liked it.
hollydeitz's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this! I don't know enough about literature or writing to explain why it was so amazing. I've just never read anything like it. It made me uncomfortable and made me laugh and even once made me snarf my vodka. Well done!
lornarose's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars. Although these were all entertaining, most ended abruptly and some felt more like literary experiments than actual finished stories. I had really high expectations going in, as I absolutely loved both Tampa and Made For Love, and unfortunately most of the stories did not meet them. A few stories did stand out to me though (the pornstar one, the delivery girl one, and the garden gnome one) and I think Nutting has an incredible ability to both conceptualize and realize absurd scenarios.
zabacitanovine's review against another edition
4.0
Well now...
Most of these stories were weird and bizzare for the sole sake of being bizzare but it didn't push MFA to your nose to the point where you start rolling your eyes.
Dancing Rat ruined me on a deeply personal level I couldn't bare to touch the book for 2 days, but I enjoyed more of the other stories for no real reason. They were just... mad.
Most of these stories were weird and bizzare for the sole sake of being bizzare but it didn't push MFA to your nose to the point where you start rolling your eyes.
Dancing Rat ruined me on a deeply personal level I couldn't bare to touch the book for 2 days, but I enjoyed more of the other stories for no real reason. They were just... mad.
emdawgb's review against another edition
4.0
*There may be a few small spoilers in here. Nothing too important though.*
Let Alissa Nutting take your hand and lead you through her world of unclean jobs for women and girls. Her short story collection features women with a variety of odd jobs and life circumstances. Some stories are quite funny, some are bittersweet, and some seem innocuous before they reveal a devastating punch. The highlights of the collection, as they stand out in my mind, are Hellion, Ant Colony, Gardener, and She-Man.
In Hellion, a woman who has died finds herself in Hell. Her first observation is that her breasts, a slight A-cup in her living days, are suddenly much larger. She soon finds that they spray acid in self-defence when the men of Hell harass her. Unimpressed with the options for dating, she begins dating the Devil himself.
Ant Colony starts with the jarring idea, presented matter-of-factly, that as space on earth has depleted, humans have been required to host an organism within themselves. The protagonist of this story, a beautiful and vain actress, eschewed the options of barnacles or hosting aquatic life in the form of breast implants, chooses to have her bones hollowed out to turn her body into an ant colony.
In Gardener, a physically neglected middle-aged woman begins to fantasise about the gnome in her back garden, who she sees fornicating with the other garden ornaments every night. As she withdraws further from her husband emotionally and sexually, the gnome begins to take on a greater form in her mind and in life.
She-Man starts jovially and openly, with the line 'Ginno doesn't know I'm really a man, but other than that we're completely honest with one another' nestled within the first paragraph. Nutting holds the story tight and faintly amusing before it spirals out of control and unravels towards the end, finishing with a last paragraph so blisteringly final I had to read it twice to take in its whole impact.
Nutting takes no prisoners as she runs the gamut of human experience and inhuman awfulness, from white supremacy to abortion, from suicide to cannibalism, from a man who smokes the hair of corpses to a girl who is sent into an air-conditioning vent to confront the ghost of her mother. In this way, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls might not be for the faint-hearted and easily offended, but it is a worthwhile read that might make you laugh and smile just as often as it makes you grimace and gasp.
Let Alissa Nutting take your hand and lead you through her world of unclean jobs for women and girls. Her short story collection features women with a variety of odd jobs and life circumstances. Some stories are quite funny, some are bittersweet, and some seem innocuous before they reveal a devastating punch. The highlights of the collection, as they stand out in my mind, are Hellion, Ant Colony, Gardener, and She-Man.
In Hellion, a woman who has died finds herself in Hell. Her first observation is that her breasts, a slight A-cup in her living days, are suddenly much larger. She soon finds that they spray acid in self-defence when the men of Hell harass her. Unimpressed with the options for dating, she begins dating the Devil himself.
Ant Colony starts with the jarring idea, presented matter-of-factly, that as space on earth has depleted, humans have been required to host an organism within themselves. The protagonist of this story, a beautiful and vain actress, eschewed the options of barnacles or hosting aquatic life in the form of breast implants, chooses to have her bones hollowed out to turn her body into an ant colony.
In Gardener, a physically neglected middle-aged woman begins to fantasise about the gnome in her back garden, who she sees fornicating with the other garden ornaments every night. As she withdraws further from her husband emotionally and sexually, the gnome begins to take on a greater form in her mind and in life.
She-Man starts jovially and openly, with the line 'Ginno doesn't know I'm really a man, but other than that we're completely honest with one another' nestled within the first paragraph. Nutting holds the story tight and faintly amusing before it spirals out of control and unravels towards the end, finishing with a last paragraph so blisteringly final I had to read it twice to take in its whole impact.
Nutting takes no prisoners as she runs the gamut of human experience and inhuman awfulness, from white supremacy to abortion, from suicide to cannibalism, from a man who smokes the hair of corpses to a girl who is sent into an air-conditioning vent to confront the ghost of her mother. In this way, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls might not be for the faint-hearted and easily offended, but it is a worthwhile read that might make you laugh and smile just as often as it makes you grimace and gasp.
knick_nat's review against another edition
I feel like I can’t properly rate this because I have no idea what was going on in the stories. A lot of them made me feel physically ill at times, they were just so odd.
mrsthrift's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to read this book for so long that I can't remember the original reason i wanted to read it but finally the stars aligned and I did. It's a collection of short stories about women with various "unclean jobs," including deliverywoman, porn star, cat owner, gardener, knife thrower, zookeeper, alcoholic, etc.
Alissa Nutting plays with how gender works, along with the messy violence, gross bodily functions, and the uglier sides of desire and lust. I am certain this author identifies as a feminist, if you know what I mean. The women in these stories are not in control of their agency, and the men are almost entirely exploitative, mean or misogynistic. There are a lot of funny moments. There is a lot to think about in these pages. Several stories explore fucked up relationships with moms, but most of the conflict is of the romantic man-woman variety. The characters and settings are quite strange: for example, a game show where the winner has anal sex on the moon with the main character, a porn star, or another story with an older woman who is desperately sexually attracted to the garden gnome who comes alive at night to express his virility.
There is explicit material in many of these stories - call it visceral or call it raunchy, whatever you prefer -it's a hallmark of a certain type of feminist fiction written in a sort of time by a certain type of person. I'm not trying to say that it feels very "third wave feminist," just that there are a lot of sexual encounters and sexual elements, among all kinds of woman, of all ages, but certainly not with other women.
I especially liked "Ant Colony." "When space on Earth became very limited, it was declared all people had to host another organism on or inside of their bodies." A vain, beautiful actress has holes drilled into her bones to house a colony of ants. At first, it seems like a perfect solution, as she can't feel the ants and they aren't visible so they don't affect her work. "I can tell you this: I did love how invisible the ants were. They were creatures that seemed to consider themselves neither important nor beautiful.” She begins to sense them inside her, and then they begin to eat her from the inside out. The actress leaves her obligations and life behind to become “Eat, Walk, Lift, Chomp.” This story tapped into my long-standing obsession with bot flies, but it was creepier and sadder than any bot fly infestation I've ever thought about. So, there's something in that.
This book offers some interesting tropes to the world of quirky, dark humored, feminist fiction. Nutting gave me something beyond the same rehashed narratives and themes I've come to expect from that type of book. I was, however, colossally disappointed and grossed out by the single trans woman character in the unfortunately-titled "She-Man." The character fell flat and the plot was so predictable. The former prostitute trans woman goes stealth, gets a nice boyfriend with a decent job, a little dog and her own business that allows her to make money off her creativity. Her former pimp tells her boyfriend about her history. The dog gets killed, the boyfriend kicks her out, and then he tells a bunch of bigoted white supremacists that she's a man. The white supremacists beat her to death in an alley after she makes an impassioned plea for life, invoking their sisters, mothers, wives.
I literally cannot understand why this author can write so many interesting stories with unconventional narratives about women, but cannot think of any story involving a trans woman that isn't "exposed, rejected, killed." It is exhausting to me to think of how far we have come on this and yet, here we are, Alissa Nutting writing "She-Man" in the year 2011. At least she didn't try to tackle the subject of race amirite? Small favors.
And that's the crux of this collection for me. It's on point with a lot of feminist issues that define my political life (abortion, sexuality, money, careers, mothering, daughtering, caring for animals, morality, infection, disease, drugs, political guilt, porn, aging, etc) but it seems to fall short in the ways that it could have been exceptional and different. There was an opportunity here, and this book took the easy way out.
You could make excuses for it, like yes, it is fiction and it doesn't make some higher claim to be the perfect modern feminist fables. The fact is, I'm writing about this interesting book that was written in my lifetime by someone who is probably on the spectrum of my social/cultural/political community and I'm saying, this book should have been better than that and I'm not going to stop asking for something better. I just can't.
Alissa Nutting plays with how gender works, along with the messy violence, gross bodily functions, and the uglier sides of desire and lust. I am certain this author identifies as a feminist, if you know what I mean. The women in these stories are not in control of their agency, and the men are almost entirely exploitative, mean or misogynistic. There are a lot of funny moments. There is a lot to think about in these pages. Several stories explore fucked up relationships with moms, but most of the conflict is of the romantic man-woman variety. The characters and settings are quite strange: for example, a game show where the winner has anal sex on the moon with the main character, a porn star, or another story with an older woman who is desperately sexually attracted to the garden gnome who comes alive at night to express his virility.
There is explicit material in many of these stories - call it visceral or call it raunchy, whatever you prefer -it's a hallmark of a certain type of feminist fiction written in a sort of time by a certain type of person. I'm not trying to say that it feels very "third wave feminist," just that there are a lot of sexual encounters and sexual elements, among all kinds of woman, of all ages, but certainly not with other women.
I especially liked "Ant Colony." "When space on Earth became very limited, it was declared all people had to host another organism on or inside of their bodies." A vain, beautiful actress has holes drilled into her bones to house a colony of ants. At first, it seems like a perfect solution, as she can't feel the ants and they aren't visible so they don't affect her work. "I can tell you this: I did love how invisible the ants were. They were creatures that seemed to consider themselves neither important nor beautiful.” She begins to sense them inside her, and then they begin to eat her from the inside out. The actress leaves her obligations and life behind to become “Eat, Walk, Lift, Chomp.” This story tapped into my long-standing obsession with bot flies, but it was creepier and sadder than any bot fly infestation I've ever thought about. So, there's something in that.
This book offers some interesting tropes to the world of quirky, dark humored, feminist fiction. Nutting gave me something beyond the same rehashed narratives and themes I've come to expect from that type of book. I was, however, colossally disappointed and grossed out by the single trans woman character in the unfortunately-titled "She-Man." The character fell flat and the plot was so predictable. The former prostitute trans woman goes stealth, gets a nice boyfriend with a decent job, a little dog and her own business that allows her to make money off her creativity. Her former pimp tells her boyfriend about her history. The dog gets killed, the boyfriend kicks her out, and then he tells a bunch of bigoted white supremacists that she's a man. The white supremacists beat her to death in an alley after she makes an impassioned plea for life, invoking their sisters, mothers, wives.
I literally cannot understand why this author can write so many interesting stories with unconventional narratives about women, but cannot think of any story involving a trans woman that isn't "exposed, rejected, killed." It is exhausting to me to think of how far we have come on this and yet, here we are, Alissa Nutting writing "She-Man" in the year 2011. At least she didn't try to tackle the subject of race amirite? Small favors.
And that's the crux of this collection for me. It's on point with a lot of feminist issues that define my political life (abortion, sexuality, money, careers, mothering, daughtering, caring for animals, morality, infection, disease, drugs, political guilt, porn, aging, etc) but it seems to fall short in the ways that it could have been exceptional and different. There was an opportunity here, and this book took the easy way out.
You could make excuses for it, like yes, it is fiction and it doesn't make some higher claim to be the perfect modern feminist fables. The fact is, I'm writing about this interesting book that was written in my lifetime by someone who is probably on the spectrum of my social/cultural/political community and I'm saying, this book should have been better than that and I'm not going to stop asking for something better. I just can't.
yesterdays_window's review against another edition
5.0
very very strange short stories. but interesting concept that relate to current society
elizadunaway's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoyed these wacky short stories. Loved how all the characters stayed so human and selfish despite being in fantastic or otherworldly circumstances.