Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

Some people in Hell are nice. They just happened to have done a very reprehensible thing at one point. I killed my husband once, for instance. But I felt bad enough about it to also kill myself.

This is a collection of both weird and weirdly heartfelt short stories. A woman arrives in Hell and ends up in a relationship with the devil. A grandmother sends her granddaughter into the heating vent to confront the ghost of her dead mother. A woman who works piloting cargo ships from planet to planet buys her cryogenically frozen mother when the prison she was held in closes. A mortician smokes the hair of the deceased to gain insight into their lives.

But when I'm around children it seems like I will someday be able to accept my own death. I show more observe their natural purity, the joy they derive from grass, trees, and human company, and I realize that these things would never make me joyful....I also like the park because kids are easy to watch: they're fast and loud and they never stop moving. Watching kids play is like staring at an aquarium set to "boil."

The longer stories in this collection, where Nutting took the time to allow her characters to fully inhabit their odd circumstances, were the strongest in this book. The shorter ones felt undeveloped. show less

I was pleased that the first story in this collection might have been the best short story I've ever read. Little did I know that it was going to prove to be the second- or third-best story in the book. At its best, the stories feature enormously inventive premises--a woman goes to Hell and grows acid-spewing breasts for self-defense, six people boiling in a pot exchange views on what it's like to be eaten--and about half of the book consists of these masterpieces. The other half of the stories are usually quirky narratives of the life of today's youth and feature a good deal of venery and drunkenness. These stories are never less than good, but I liked them less. As for outright flaws, the only one worth mentioning is the author's show more penchant for homonym errors; give her a chance to choose the wrong one, and she'll choose it. Notwithstanding, this is nothing less than a must-read. show less

Short stories are a hard sell with me, but this one was effortless.
These stories were provoking without being demanding, dark without being heavy, offering questions without suggesting judgments, staying fun while being thinky.

I have to admit, I liked this short story collection. It reminded me of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender which I loved because it was so weird and unexpected. The stories in Unclean Jobs are also bizarre, and the characters verge on repellant, but the weirdness sucked me in. I'm going to check out other things by her.

I won't deny that my reading tastes have evolved over the last two years, particularly when it comes to strange or unusual texts. So it wasn't that far out of the ordinary for me to want to read Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls when I saw it was being offered by the publisher for review. Now, I've read some strange stuff through my two years as a Literature major but I have to say, this one really pushes the boundaries. Let me explain.

First, the writing and storytelling are utterly brilliant. Crisp, clean, unusual stories from just a few pages long to a dozen or more. But each story is "meaty," as in it gives the reader something to think of, an insight to dwell on. One of the stories that really made me think centered around a show more cryogenic frozen mother who is purchased by her daughter. I was on the edge throughout the story, wanting to find out what was going to happen and happily/anxiously following the twists and turns of the story until its completion. But that was just one of many stories that had me feeling that way.

Mostly, the advice I would give to those wanting to pick up this strange, wonderful collection of short stories is not to be sucked in by what could be classified as the "shock aspect." I think what made these stories really speak to me was delving deeper, setting aside that shock factor to understand what it was trying to get across. It was used as a tool, a way for me to see life in a way that was unfamiliar and strange and, as a result, the most ordinary, mundane emotions that I deal with on a day to day emotions were bright and new. And that is good writing, folks. show less

Very cohesive collection of bonkers stories. I very much wish I had read one story a week, maybe less, and let it fester. I think they are simultaneously very good and less impactful than I wanted them to be. Might be a book I'll page through again and revise my opinion of, someday.
3.5, which means I liked it.

An entertaining read. Nutting has created sympathetic characters in each story, no matter how ridiculous and fantastic their jobs (and lives) may be. My favorite passage, from "Deliverywoman":
"The small window of the capsule begins to frost over and I know this is my chance: this is where I get to make the face that I will have until I wake. I decide to stick out my tongue. As if this painful freeze is just a snowflake I can catch and eat, as if my mother is just bad medicine I can swallow."