{"id":6784,"date":"2016-12-14T06:48:16","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T06:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6784"},"modified":"2016-12-16T12:53:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T12:53:00","slug":"fen-by-daisy-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6784","title":{"rendered":"Fen by Daisy Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Jonathan Cape 2 June 2016 <\/strong><\/p>\n

208pp, hardback, \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daisy Johnson\u2019s first story-collection has the impact of a lightning strike.\u00a0 Bold, frank and supremely confident, her voice leaps out of these pages with a startling account of young womanhood.\u00a0 In places, the fear of adult life comes right at you.<\/p>\n

Set in the ancient fenland of eastern England, Johnson\u2019s stories move effortlessly through a known landscape of water, water-beasts and watery consequences, while reporting from the front line of modern female identity.\u00a0 A maverick defiance lights the way, a demand to be heard.<\/p>\n

\u2018How to Fuck a Man You Don\u2019t Know\u2019 describes a young woman\u2019s impulse towards reckless coupling and then the pulling back as she fights to regain her sense of self.\u00a0 \u2018He says you are funny, grasps you round the waist and says you are softening like butter.\u00a0 Listen, you want to tell him.\u00a0 Listen to me.\u2019<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s opening story, \u2018Starver\u2019, is an account of anorexia. In it, a teenage girl keeps her older sister company as she metamorphoses into something that looks \u2018like a length of piping\u2019:\u00a0 a body, turning in fact into an eel.\u00a0 In the curiously titled \u2018A Bruise the Shape and Size of a Door Handle\u2019, feelings flood into two disaffected girls and into the very fabric of the house in which they are experimenting with sex and porn, to alleviate \u2018the dull iron of living\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018How to Lose It\u2019 compares the sex imperative to \u2018riding red lights\u2019; \u2018The Superstition of Albatross\u2019 speaks of the fear of responsibility, especially for babies\u00a0 –\u00a0 and with good reason, you think, as you read in \u2018A Heavy Devotion\u2019 of the child who takes everything, including his mother\u2019s thoughts, memories and words.<\/p>\n

There is blood here aplenty, in a story of cannibalistic sisters and another about men and culling.\u00a0 There is the theme of escape – or, rather, of exchange – as a woman chooses to live with fish, or to make a child out of earth, or to make a bargain with a fox.\u00a0 Always, there is the water and the place, and the horribly familiar prospect of dead-ends.<\/p>\n

Daisy Johnson was born in 1990.\u00a0 Her short fiction has appeared in The Boston Review <\/em>and The Warwick Review<\/em>.\u00a0 In 2014, she received the A.M. Heath prize.\u00a0 Read her now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*A 2016 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

There is blood here aplenty, in a story of cannibalistic sisters and another about men and culling. There is the theme of escape – or, rather, of exchange – as a woman chooses to live with fish, or to make a child out of earth, or to make a bargain with a fox. Always, there is the water and the place, and the horribly familiar prospect of dead-ends […] 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":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6784"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7214,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6784\/revisions\/7214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}