Customer Reviews

Cut Away

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Catherine Kirkwood's new novel, CUT AWAY, is set in the California desert as well as in L.A. Against this stark landscape, four characters--a lesbian plastic surgeon, a transsexual woman, an unstable mother and a runaway daughter--all get a bit of an existential makeover. On first glance this might seem the material of a ha-ha reality program. Not so. Not even a little. In Kirkwood's steady hand, questions of identity and beauty are brought delicately to the fore by way of character, each of which seems familiar and fresh at the same time. It's as though the author has taken someone we all know and drawn her while looking through a high-powered lens of compassion that yields a portrait with fresh angles. Who is that, we wonder. Are we really so different?

This is a spare novel, and its barren landscape makes the messiness of life pop. What we think we need, what we think we want, how we stumble trying to get them both, this is what the characters struggle with here. Psychologically astute and cinematically rendered, the arduous metamorphosis of these characters will be with you long after the story ends.

Cut Away is a book that grabs your attention immediately. It is as if Kirkwood has invited you into the book.....her rich descriptions of people and places make you feel as if you are experiencing the story first hand with Alexandra, Eleanor and Asa.
Read this book.......you will not be disappointed.

How to describe? The faces she presents are intoxicating but the characters free us from who other people think they are. Fine detail, riveting read. Being born one way and molding a carapace to suit one reptilian form, and changing like a chameleon to suit another spirit, magic as a dragonfly. Metamorphos, changing identity by changing a body; Olivia wants the scalpel to release a cocoon she's been awaiting for. She wants to awaken as much as Gregor Samsa wanted to go back to sleep. Well done.

Kirkwood's use of language is exceptional. If a writer isn't able to take me into the story within the first two chapters, I don't finish the book. The descriptive and poetic writing had me hooked by the end of the second page.

The characters are well developed. And as in life, there are no black and white answers for her characters. This is critical as they face issues of identity, including gender, sexual orientation, haves vs. have nots and other labels we use.

I saw more commonalities between myself and her characters than differences, despite identities that are different from my own. This led me to explore the ideas of metamorphosis within the story, as well as my own life.

Not only is the story very good, the ideas and experiences presented allowed for many hours of self reflection and good discussions with friends.

I look forward to reading more by this author.