Sub Rosa

If one of Michelle Tea's San Francisco novels met Wlliam Vollmann's The Royal Family in a dive-bar bathroom, engaged in a hazy, drug-fueled hook-up neither remembered the next day but both felt pretty good about, and got pregnant, the resulting child/novel would be Sub Rosa. It's dark, funny, skeezy, feminist, gross, beautiful, smart, dream-like yet absolutely true. Our narrator begins the book couch surfing in exchange for handjobs & from there, well, things can only get different. She finds happiness in Sub Rosa, a magical part of San Francisco. If Snow White or Cinderella ever turned tricks, they wouldn't survive an instant in Sub Rosa, but I bet half of Sub Rosa's inhabitants think they're fairy tale princesses and in Sub Rosa they show more kind of are.

But beware: there's a desperation to this delight, as in Tea's novels, as in Vollmann's. Sub Rosa is a fantasy about what happens to "all the beautiful lost children" (235), of whatever age, who go missing, never to be found. They're not dead or exploited, they're joyfully in Sub Rosa with only the looming Dark to remind them of what could be. I loved reading this, hated for it to end, but it gave me nightmares that had me waking up my dogs. show less

Vancouver writer Amber Dawn’s Sub Rosa, published in 2010 by the radical and remarkable publishing house Arsenal Pulp Press, is a fantasy novel that is both familiar and fantastic. It deals with (what should be) a recognized reality in its depiction of gutsy, gritty, strong women doing sex work in Vancouver’s East end. But Dawn—a writer gutsy, gritty, and strong like her characters—has imagined a world that is a glittery yet tough fable twist on the story of a teenage runaway turned sex worker...

Check out the rest of my review here: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/hello-world/

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

For the record, I want it noted that I wanted very much to like Amber Dawn's Sub Rosa; it not only comes recommended by my old '90s writing buddy Michelle Tea, but Daniel Casey even asked to re-run my resulting write-up at his Gently Read Literature, a great litmag that I love having the chance to support. Ah, but then I actually read the book, and realized that it's an only so-so academic/transgressive radical-feminist fairytale, much in the style of Kathy Acker or Lynn Breedlove but not with any of their verve, wit or exuberance for life. show more Although I wouldn't call it actively bad, I unfortunately find myself with not much to say after reading it besides, "Oh, ho-hum, another one of those books, I see;" and that's a shame, given its pedigree and people's interest. It comes just slightly recommended today.

Out of 10: 7.1 show less