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A review by colin_cox
Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls: Stories by Alissa Nutting
5.0
The horror and comedy genres are not as unusual of bedfellows as one might think. The slasher film genre is, at its best, a sublime medley of horror and comedy. The aesthetic space that horror and comedy create is where Alissa Nutting's short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls situates itself. For example, in the introduction, Nutting writes, "Humor and horror are both vehicles for examining the terror of loneliness, the absurdity of it...Humor lets us approach the spaces of terror in everyday life where order is not possible" (xii).
This passage operates as a thesis statement of sorts, but it is more applicable to some stories and less so to others. For example, Nutting confronts the humor and horror inherent to orderless spaces in stories such as "Model's Assistant" and "Deliverywoman," two stories about encounters with a terrifying, yet comedically absurd, other. Furthermore, these two stories examine the role proximity plays in our understanding of the other. On the one hand, "Model's Assistant" is a story about distance and elusiveness. Conversely, "Deliverywoman" explores and unpacks overexposure and hyper-proximity.
I cannot shower this collection with enough praise. I use one of Nutting's stories in an intro literature course I teach, and I would certainly recommend her work to a casual reader or anyone interested in updating a syllabus.
This passage operates as a thesis statement of sorts, but it is more applicable to some stories and less so to others. For example, Nutting confronts the humor and horror inherent to orderless spaces in stories such as "Model's Assistant" and "Deliverywoman," two stories about encounters with a terrifying, yet comedically absurd, other. Furthermore, these two stories examine the role proximity plays in our understanding of the other. On the one hand, "Model's Assistant" is a story about distance and elusiveness. Conversely, "Deliverywoman" explores and unpacks overexposure and hyper-proximity.
I cannot shower this collection with enough praise. I use one of Nutting's stories in an intro literature course I teach, and I would certainly recommend her work to a casual reader or anyone interested in updating a syllabus.