Saturday, March 29, 2008

Lisa Tuttle's My Death


I'm pleased to announce that Aqueduct will be releasing Lisa Tuttle's My Death this summer. This creepy but feministically delicious novella will be the twenty-first volume in our Conversation Pieces series. It has previously been published in the UK, by PS Publishing, but this will be its first North American publication. Who can resist a story about an all but forgotten early twentieth-century feminist novelist who becomes the biographical subject of an early twenty-first century feminist novelist? And one who painted a watercolor she titled "My Death"? Here's an excerpt:

I gazed at the painted image of an island, a rocky island rendered loosely in shades of brown and green and gray and grayish pink. I remained unimpressed, and baffled by Alistair’s attitude towards this uninspired daub. Risky?

And then, all at once, as if another light had been switched on, I saw the hidden picture. Within the contours of the island was a woman. A woman, naked, on her back, her knees up and legs splayed open, her face hidden by a forearm flung across it and by the long hair – greenish, grayish – that flowed around her like the sea.

The center of the painting, what drew the eye and commanded the attention, was the woman’s vulva: all the life of the painting was concentrated there. A slash of pink, startling against the mossy greens and browns, seemed to touch a nerve in my own groin.


And why did she title such a painting "My Death"? I won't spoil it!

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