Death Is Not an Option: Stories - Hardcover

Rivecca, Suzanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393072568 ISBN 13: 9780393072563

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

A bold, dazzling debut collection about girls and women in a world where sexuality and self-delusion collide.

In these stories, a teacher obsesses over a student who comes to class with scratch marks on his face; a Catholic girl graduating high school finds a warped kind of redemption in her school’s contrived class rituals; and a woman looking to rent a house is sucked into a strangely inappropriate correspondence with one of the landlords. These are just a few of the powerful plotlines in Suzanne Rivecca’s gorgeously wrought collection. From a college student who adopts a false hippie persona to find love, to a young memoirist who bumps up against a sexually obsessed fan, the characters in these fiercely original tales grapple with what it means to be honest with themselves and the world.

These stories explode “with piercing insight . . . illuminating the dangerous dance between victims and saviors. [They] deliver us to the edge of grief, that precarious place where the moral compass spins―where codes of love and law and religion fail. Mercy here depends on a tiger’s sublime grace, our capacity to resist deeper harm, and the right of every broken being to remain silent” (Melanie Rae Thon).

About this title

About the Author

Suzanne Rivecca’s fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2009, among other publications. A winner of the Pushcart Prize and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

The female protagonists in Rivecca's debut collection have a lot in common, so much so that they at times feel like the same person, despite (slight) variations in context. They are a mostly Midwestern bunch, sassy, bookish, and Catholic (or lapsed Catholic), but it's their ambivalent relationships to victimhood that provide the collection with its real material: some refuse to be pitied, while others dabble in self-victimization for selfish purposes. In the title story, Emma bids farewell to her Sacred Heart classmates, including the popular Claire, who has spent most of their friendship trying to publicly humiliate Emma. In Yours Will Do Nicely, 21-year-old Katrina tries to maintain a relationship with a one-night stand by writing a fanciful letter to the boy she's effortlessly enchanted. Very Special Victims introduces Kath, who can't seem to convince those around her that her existence shouldn't be defined by the fact that she was molested as a child. Rivecca's a competent writer and obviously adept at mining the experiences of a certain kind of character, but the stories' provocations aren't delivered upon; instead, they feel repetitive and self-satisfied. (July)
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Rivecca's premier collection is gripping, distinctive, and altogether impressive. Her heroines are flawed and captivating, and their stories are steeped in bizarreness. Confused young women fleeing Catholic pasts are a specialty, from a high-school senior hell-bent on disliking her classmates but terrified of leaving them, to the memoirist who secretly delights in the intrusive emails she receives from a landlord. These women are smart and stoic, yet they seek out pain and hate themselves for it. A haunting account of childhood molestation is remarkable in its description of the child's psychology and the scars carried into adulthood. Another, about a woman who grows to love her father after loathing him as a child, is powerful in its tenderness and provocative in its blurring of the lines between protagonist and antagonist. Rivecca relishes that blurring, and accomplishes a lot as a storyteller via that approach. What is most unforgettable about this collection, however, is its sharp language and rich detail, signifying the arrival of a wonderful new writer. --Annie Tully

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393072568
• ISBN 13: 9780393072563
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 222