{"id":5103,"date":"2014-05-05T11:25:57","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T11:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5103"},"modified":"2014-05-08T11:20:34","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T11:20:34","slug":"wounding-by-heidi-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5103","title":{"rendered":"Wounding by Heidi James"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Bluemoose Books 24 April 2014 <\/strong><\/p>\n

176pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018The cubicle is clean, with only minimal graffiti; she supposes only adults use these toilets.\u00a0 Accordingly, there are stickers offering the numbers of counselling services and taxi firms.\u00a0 A poster reminds her that the police will protect her if her partner is abusive; the poster also conveniently lists the types of abuse one might encounter.\u00a0 She wipes herself, stands and pulls up her knickers, smoothing her skirt down.\u00a0 She washes her hands, avoiding her reflection.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t want to think about her husband or children, but they prey on her mind constantly, no matter what, she can\u2019t shake loose.\u00a0 She is an animal in a trap that will have to resort to chewing off its own limb to escape.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Alienation is a powerful subject.\u00a0 For women, life can trigger a desperation verging on madness.\u00a0 Their bodies can become their enemies, their partners and children lethal traps.\u00a0 The literature on female breakdown is large, and shocking.\u00a0 The shock is that of recognition.<\/p>\n

In this, her debut novel, Heidi James explores an extreme case of self-harm.\u00a0 She opens with an arresting close-up of an unnamed damaged woman lying in a hospital bed being looked after:\u00a0 \u2018swaddled\u2019, \u2018unable to hurt herself\u2019, \u2018reduced to a thing that loves\u2019.<\/p>\n

Then we meet Cora, a financial-services manager, commuting home from work, eerily detached and going through the motions.\u00a0 Already, in the first paragraph, the \u2018blunt scissors\u2019 of the ticket-gates place us in existential horror territory.\u00a0 At work, Cora is completely in control; inside, though, she is in danger, seeing teeth and mouths everywhere.\u00a0 At home, she moves in family life as if in a nightmare, everywhere at risk of erasure or violence.\u00a0 Her children\u2019s and husband\u2019s love is \u2018a beast, ripping chunks from her body\u2019.<\/p>\n

As we follow Cora through her minefield, we hear also from her husband (known only as \u2018he\u2019), who thinks of his family as \u2018ordinary, normal people\u2019.\u00a0 As Cora\u2019s crisis deepens, we see him trying to puzzle out what\u2019s going on:\u00a0 does she have a lover, is it something he\u2019s done, why isn\u2019t she coping?<\/p>\n

Neurotic with her husband in private, abusive to their friends in public, Cora is hiding something truly terrifying:\u00a0 she is unnatural.\u00a0 In one of the most shocking scenes, she terrorises her little boy:\u00a0 \u2018She is pleased by his fear.\u00a0 It is as reassuring as money in the bank.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fear of blankness, and fear of her own anger, drive Cora to extremes.\u00a0 She begins to torture herself in order to feel\u00a0 –\u00a0 or maybe in order to tolerate her own lack of feeling.\u00a0 First with clothes-pegs, then with sex-aid clamps, she pinches her nipples.\u00a0 She digs out one of her finger-nails, rips out her hair.\u00a0 She picks up a man in a bar, invites rough sex, then finds herself biting his penis.\u00a0 By the end, she has taken mortification of the flesh to its absolute limit.<\/p>\n

Hailed by Byte the Book as \u2018a beautiful, brutal novel\u2019, Wounding <\/em>is a searing portrait of a woman on the edge, and should provoke much discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Meet Cora, a financial-services manager, commuting home from work, eerily detached and going through the motions. Already, in the first paragraph, the \u2018blunt scissors\u2019 of the ticket-gates place us in existential horror territory. At work, Cora is completely in control; inside, though, she is in danger, seeing teeth and mouths everywhere. At home, she moves in family life as if in a nightmare, everywhere at risk of erasure or violence. Her children\u2019s and husband\u2019s love is \u2018a beast, ripping chunks from her body\u2019 […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5103"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5109,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5103\/revisions\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}