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Book Review : Amanda Gowin - Radium Girls (2014)


Order RADIUM GIRLS here

Flat on my back, legs up, with one foot on either side of a framed photo of a Red Pomeranian, I can't help but wonder if it it looks as if I've birthed a wall of these monsters.

I wouldn't call myself a feminist, but I understand what their struggle is about. Our society has a difficult time letting go of the idea of what a woman should be like, how she should behave, dress, etc. Women won a few battles for basic rights, but gender inequality is still institutionalized. I don't mean to get all preachy on you, but every time I read a female author it blows my mind how wrong and narrow-minded my perception of the opposite sex can be sometimes. Amanda Gowin's short story collection Radium Girls was a little bit like falling down the rabbit hole in that regard. 

The title Radium Girls is a little misleading. It's not about glowing, toxic 1950s housewives and nuclear paranoia or at least not literally. The girls of Amanda Gowin are alienated and fighting against the odds. More than half of the collection is taken up by a novella titled The Pink Manatee, which I devoured in a single sitting. It's a slightly hallucinatory time travel story that somewhat ties into the 1950s housewife theme featured on the cover. It wasn't my favorite story in the collection, but it was the best shaped narrative as Amanda Gowin's short stories rarely feature complete story arcs, but rather intense moments in her character's lives.

Some of these stories I would've liked to be longer. Tinder Box was over right after it wrapped up my heart in its cold embrace. Amanda Gowin's depiction of the helplessness and the frustration of a domestic violence victime locked outside in a timeless American street is both enlightening and heartbreaking. I've read some gorier descriptions of domestic violence, but I don't think I've read anything even remotely close to how frustrating and hopeless it must feel.

Two other stories that stood out to me were Fever and Gilded Bones. They both have spare dialogue and focus on exposition and character psychology, which are Amanda Gowin's best gift as a writer. They are not complete, fully formed narratives either, but they are such vibrant and transparent portraits of a reality white male readers like me could never ever access otherwise that it got my empathy gland going. This is what literature is all about, no?

Radium Girls was a challenging and eye-opening reading experience. Some readers will find Amanda Gowin's language to be difficult, sometimes impenetrable even. I stumbled upon a couple paragraphs, not understanding what the hell I just read myself. The intimate, vibrant and honest writing of Amanda Gowin won me over though. It is definitely unique and it won't be everybody's cup of tea, but it really is something you won't be able to find anywhere else. Most times, I see women in fiction being depicted as victims and plot devices or as these foul-mouthed beings who secretly want to be boys. There are none of these clichés in Radium Girls. It is free of patriarchal bullshit in ways you cannot imagine. Read it to find out!

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