Rebecca Brown (2) (1956–)

i don't know that i understood all of this but i can say that she's doing something really unusual and interesting here, and something that although it was written in 1990, feels so fresh and alive and boundary pushing, even today. she's talking about (maybe? i think?) the burdens women carry, the line between metaphor and reality, unhealthy relationships, and way more that i didn't understand. the stuff she's doing by toeing this line between reality and speculation is really interesting, show more though. like the burdens (of womanhood?) are being literally carried around in a bag, so what is real and what is metaphor. also, the first half of these stories don't seem to relate, but then you realize that they do, but how? there are repeating motifs and characters but in how many stories? all of them? a few of them? how many women are in these stories? 3? the same 3 or different 3? i don't know. but i'm interested. show less

The Children's Crusade by Rebecca Brown is a short, quiet novel following an unnamed girl through five stages of her parents' divorce and the loss of her brother Sten. It's a difficult read — not because it's long, but because Brown explains almost nothing, leaving you to piece things together yourself. The writing is spare and sometimes hypnotic, and the final image of the girl writing a letter to her absent brother while already vowing never to let her own future children tear her apart show more is genuinely sad and stays with you. It's a thoughtful, honest little book, but it keeps you at a distance the whole time — and its meaning only really settles after you've sat with it a while. show less

Originally published in 1986, Rebecca Brown’s brilliant first novel explores the psychic repercussions of growing up in an alcoholic family, and the ways in which one woman’s past continues to inform and inhabit her life. Robin Daley’s childhood is dominated by a sense of impermanence: her father, a flamboyant, hard-drinking military pilot whom Robin both idolizes and resents, disappears as suddenly and unexpectedly as he arrives; her family is forever packing and unpacking their show more possessions as they move from one place to the next. Her adulthood offers an escape, a chance to find what it is she longs for--security, love, a place to call home. But strange things happen when the dark corners and locked rooms of family life are revealed, and Robin finds that her world is still haunted by her past in ways that are wildly fantastic and terribly real.

“A doom-filled heart-aching first novel, flooded with meditative fantasy.” -- Kirkus Review

“Thank goodness for once one can say here is a real new voice—ripe and imaginative, often funny, and sliding craftily between fact and wishful fantasy.” – The Sunday Times (London)

“Exceptionally well written . . . Rebecca Brown takes her readers from the ordinary realities of army-base living and often gone, drinking/drunken pilot father into the unrealities of living with adults in denial, where the thin lines between daily life and reality shrink and disappear.” -- Carol Seajay, Feminist Bookstore News show less

THE DOGS: A MODERN BESTIARY - Hmm ... Weird. I'm kind of at a loss as to what to say about this book. Compelling? Well yeah, kinda. See, it's this nameless narrator who lives alone in a tiny apartment and this dog, probably a Doberman, shows up and she takes it in. She seems to be afraid of it at first, then finds it beautiful, begins to love it. Then more dogs show up, probably all Dobermans, that's not really clear. The dogs take over - not just her apartment, but her life, which she show more actually begins to fear for. Oh, and here's another thing, pretty important: it seems no one else can see the dogs, just her. It gets more complicated, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might read it and enjoy it a lot more than I did. Oh, and the narrator seems to be a lesbian, since she brings another woman home from a bar. All told, there are 25 short chapters here, and they're all pretty interesting and certainly well-written. I mean I kept on reading. Can't believe I read the whole thing. But I did. And I'm still scratching my head. The book is just so surrealistic, often like a twisted fairy tale - spooky, chilling. Towards the end, things happen that made me wonder if the narrator had perhaps been physically and sexually abused - maybe even tortured - as a child. The dogs? They don't seem real. But they stand for something, I'm pretty sure. Well, actually I'm not sure, but ... Bottom line? Rebecca Brown is a pretty damn good writer. She kept things moving forward, even when I wondered what the hell was she trying to say here. I didn't hate the book, but I didn't love it either. I'm glad I read it, but I'm also glad I'm done with it. Does that make sense?

The thing is I bought this book because I thought it was about dogs. But it's not, not really. In fact I might have to remove it from the shelf where my 'dog book' collection resides. But where to put it?

Hmm. Weird. show less