Ruin (and Other Stories)

Women and girls walk a perilously thin line between ruin and redemption in these stories as they try— with varying degrees of success— to outmanouver the violence that threatens to define their lives. There’ s the physical violence of men against their bodies— and sometimes the violence they exact in revenge. While doubts about a romantic partner, an abandonment by a sister, the fallout of a parent’ s pornography addiction, the betrayal of a friend, even the desire to touch a stranger’ s fur-like body are subtler aggressions that pack their own kinds of punches. Moving between contemporary New Zealand and London, and a dreamlike landscape that isn’ t quite real, this debut collection shimmers with a brutal kind of hope, exploring power and its contortions, powerlessness and its depravities, and the ends to which we will go to claim back agency.