Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Granta Books
Published:4th Jul '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A stunning collection of stories that weaves Hawaiian mythology with a vivid fabulism and rich sense of place - for fans of Mariana Enriquez and Carmen Maria Machado
In Hawaii, a cast of women reckon with physical and emotional alienation, and the toll it takes on their psyches. A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (boar) on the haunted Pali highway portends one woman's increasingly fraught relationship with her body during pregnancy. A woman recalls an uncanny experience, in which Elvis impersonators take centre stage, to an acquaintance who doesn't yet know just how intimately they're connected. An elderly widow begins seeing her deceased lover in the giant corpse flower a mourner has gifted her. Both a fierce love letter to mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women and a searing dispatch from an occupied territory simmering with tension, Every Drop is a Man's Nightmare takes seriously the superstitions born of the islands. Kakimoto's characters seek pleasure and purpose even in absurd circumstances, often with a surprising sense of humor, and her stories treat Hawai'i as so much more than a postcard from paradise.
In Every Drop is a Man's Nightmare, the enormously talented Megan Kakimoto gives us her Hawai'i, as bright as blood, as dark as blood. It's a book about beauty and brutality, love and threat, home and estrangement, as original and fearless a book as I've read in years. It does not pull its punches; it's altogether a knockout. Eleven knockouts, one KO for every story -- Elizabeth McCracken, author of THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM
Kakimoto's bold and haunting stories are brilliant on the mysterious and potent languages of the body, and on the enduring power of the stories that shape us. Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare is a stunning debut -- Laura van den Berg, author of I HOLD A WOLF BY THE EARS and THE THIRD HOTEL
Megan Kakimoto is an extraordinary writer - compassionate, insightful, fiercely funny and super-smart - and Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare thrums with intelligence, wisdom and wild originality. A tremendous debut by a writer who, lucky for us, has only just begun -- Molly Antopol, author of THE UNAMERICANS
Lyrical collisions of superstition, folktales, and modern Hawaiian culture saving itself in the face of cliches. Desire and confusion are rarely far apart in these powerful coming-of-age stories that prove it is possible to be many things, all the time, all at once -- Amy Hempel, author of SING TO IT
Megan Kakimoto is one of those rare writers who has mastered both story and sentence. The women in this story are audacious, resilient, and unforgettable-they have my whole heart -- Kimberly King Parsons, author of BLACK LIGHT
ISBN: 9781803510101
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages