Sam Cohen (2)

A book of lesbian short fiction in which most -- though not all -- of the characters are named Sarah seemed like something too impossibly niche to exist, so when it popped up on Kindle for a couple of bucks I grabbed it. "Sarahland" turned out to be a fun, inventive little collection, so I'm glad that I did. Cohen's got an easy, optimistic, youthful voice on the page, and her writing is often funny and dazzlingly inventive. I'm happy to report that "Sarahland" goes beyond representation: show more Cohen seems deeply -- if playfully -- preoccupied with concepts that don't turn up in every piece of modern fiction. Many of these stories dig into symbiotic and parasitical relationships, wild transformation, unexpected biological combination, sexual ecstasy, atypical forms and shapes, biblical revisionism, subcultural activity and invented persona. Sometimes the author's project seems to be driving utopias of sex and gender, while at other times her narratives run aground on inevitable contradiction and human cruelty. There are a couple of stories written from a sort of informal plural first person, so anyone who liked Joshua Farris's "Then We Came to the End" for its structural trickiness should consider checking this one out.

The only real complaint I've got is that some of these stories used standard bougie cishet sorority girl femininity -- which is, in its way, is impossible to find in its perfect form in the real world as any other socio-cultural construct -- as their starting point, which made them seem a bit more like thought exercises than I might have liked. But then, perhaps the author would respond that she wasn't exactly aiming for realism anyway, and, well, more power to her. These stories are fairly bursting with fresh perspectives and unusual ideas and are -- most importantly, perhaps -- a lot of fun to read. I want to finish by giving a shout-out to my ex-girlfriend Sara, a straight girl whose mother left that final "h" off. show less

naked furniture. exorcism or eating my twin. becoming trees. gossip. *clap clap clap clap* i devoured this collection. loved them all, but loved the ones i listed so much. this is for the weird and nasty queers. they're dark and magical and dirty and super-gay with a little bit of early 2000's vibe. i literally could not stop reading this book even when moments were off-putting. how can something so fun and beautiful be so disturbing at the same time? and were they all about different show more sarah's or did some stories feature the same sarah again? i cannot wait to reread these again, but i'm trying to wait the right amount of time before i do so. i'm already excited! show less

Strange short stories which all feature a Sarah or several.