Probably my favorite of the eleven stories in it is "My Affliction," a long, dream-like story in which the Gabrielle Bell-like narrator/protagonist has a series of strange adventures.
And this is one of my favorite parts of it. Our heroine has just been given a wooden talisman of a man named "Charlie" by a therapist, who instructs her to transfer her love for a giant so she doesn't accidentally fall in love with the Rottweiler dog a man had just given her in a park.
Crossing a bridge, she acquires another new pet:
It's a foul-mouthed mynah bird she names Rory and which, in a roundabout way, leads her to her next boyfriend. I don't think I'll ever stop finding swearing hilarious.
1 comment:
This story is one of my favorites too. I like Bell's work best when it traffics in this sort of po-faced magical realism that goes on here.
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