A review by skirkwalsh
The Fifth Woman by Nona Caspers

5.0

This volume of twenty-three connected stories brings shape, light & movement to grief in unexpected ways. The unnamed narrator has lost her girlfriend suddenly, in a car accident—and becomes lost herself. The spare prose is beautiful and memorable. Caspers' writing made me think of Anne Carson, Willa Cather, Jenny Offill, and Dan Chaon, how she writes about the negative space of the missing, and what is left behind. In the acknowledgment, the author mentioned a reference to Carson's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED in the opening story; this didn't surprise me, as her work seems to be in conversation with Carson, particular NOX (the poet's elegy to her estranged brother). There is something bewildering, surprising, and tragic about these short stories, but they cohere into a whole that will leave the reader turning over thoughts about space, death (particularly of the sudden variety), and what it means to go on living. Fiction writers may also be interested in this innovative form and how it marries so well with the author's auto-fiction mode of storytelling. Worth a read. Highly recommend.