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Verge is the first story collection from Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the memoir The Chronology of Water, and the novels The Small Backs of Children, Dora, and most recently, The Book of Joan. The collection is made up of strange stories about characters living on the margins of society, those deemed by society to be entirely forgettable. In Verge, Yuknavitch leans into the ugliness, crafting narratives about loss, aching, survival, and so on.
There are certainly some formulaic concerns I had about these stories. There are many instances when it feels like Yuknavitch writes a brilliant sentence or phrase, but then has trouble finding an appropriate place to drop in her story. In her opening story, “The Pull”, she writes of a girl who swims to escape life in a war torn country besieged by civilian bombings, remarking, “Home is a blown-up brick in her throat.” While this is certainly a moving turn of phrase, it doesn’t quite fit in the context. Yuknavitch leans on super-clear and quite literal metaphors like these in many of her stories, which can begin to feel heavy handed inside such ephemeral snapshot-like stories. In another story concerning an Eastern European girl who becomes an organ runner on the black market, Yuknavitch concludes quite unnecessarily, “There is something from spine and ice that has yet to form a language … one those bought-and-sold Eastern European girls are learning besides English: They are learning to gut themselves open so that others will run.”
But perhaps the heavy handed-ness of it all is purposeful, as the stories are focused on those in the societal fringes that most would prefer to turn away from. But Yuknavitch revels in the monstrous, in visceral descriptions of depravity in all its forms. She forces readers to confront sexual violence, drug addiction, poverty, and mass incarceration without their rose-colored glasses on. While this sort of focus is admirable, what feels most unsettling is the sexualization of these ugly phenomena. In one story, a young girl pleasures herself while watching prisoner’s at a local jail during recreation time. In another story a woman who invites a prostitute into her home to “give her a break” for an hour, and then has sex with her husband on the coffee table in which the prostitute carved an obscenity while sitting in the woman’s living room. The characters seemed to be aroused by the monstrosities surrounding them, which certainly feels more like exploitation than true interest.
Overall, Yuknavitch has built a story collection full of curiosities and horrors, which feels quite appropriate for our day and age. These stories provide insight into the many forms of physical, psychological, and emotional oppression that occur around the globe, and devote themselves fully to those who are not often given a voice in the literary landscape. While many of these stories miss the mark for me personally, “How to Lose an I” is one that I believe stands on its own in the collection, and most effectively blends Yuknavitch’s flare for prose and her ability to create depth within small narrative confines. While many of these stories are unique and bewitching, some narrative faults rendered many of them forgettable. That being said, Yuknavitch’s voice is one to watch out for, as she has shown some flashes of excellence here.