Customer Reviews

Ex Utero (Harvest American Writing)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book was so funny I couldn't put it down--perhaps because I identified with the main character, a childess woman heading into the end of her fertile years. The book actually changed me--which is a rare and wonderful reading experience--especially if done while laughing out loud.

Despite the constant humor (ala Thomas Pynchon), the motivations of the each character's odd behavior(s) seemed very real and revealing to me especially when juxtaposed against lost uteruses, sealed vaginas that have "closed up shop" and a world full of erections.

It was interesting to see how people depend on each other in a whirlwind of craziness. The book isn't expensive and it's a small investment of your time too--big font on small pages and it starts out with a humorous bang immediately. DO IT! I'm following up by reading F/32, by Eurydice. It is also amazing and impacting.

I read this book ages ago. It drove me insane. I simply hate this sort of book where outlandish things happen that don't make sense and it's supposed to be symbolic somehow but the symbolism goes right over my head.
Perhaps if I read it again, i'd get it, but it really was just rather mind-numbingly dumb in a way. Especially the afflictions of the other characters. And the main character's husband. Dang, he was irratating.

This book was recomended to me by a close friend who had the book assigned in a feminst theory class. She thought I might enjoy the interesting notion of a woman losing her uterus in a shopping mall. While I did find the book interesting in that aspect, and definetly orginal in its content, I just had a hard time getting into it. It seemed like it was over before it began, and it really didn't seem to go anywhere. It was a fun little trip, but very weird, and a bit too short.

This is a brilliant little book filled with killer lines and laugh-out-loud scenes. Foos is hilarious. I just finished her new novel and it is equally funny with more depth to the character. The symbolism is rampant but without being obstuse. It's a wacky ride, highly recommended.

There are so many tidy examples of stereotypical points of view about sexuality that fit into this short book. It's a cozy fit, just like Rita's womb sitting next to her in the booth at the diner.

It's a relief to laugh at common opinions that in normal life feel like sharp barbs.

Thank you Ms. Foos.

Ex Utero is halarious, plain and simple. To me, the book carried a very strong campy feel, reminding me of early john waters films. It's clever, outrageous, moving, perverse, touching, strange but human, and manages to address the way people look at female sexuality and what female sexuality is. If your looking for something bizzare and fun, but with an important message, than this book should be on your reading list!

I love modern books by modern women -- Kate Atkinson, Liz Jensen, Lisa Alther -- that have a sense of the irrational. I also love trawling the Fiction aisles for new women writers. Naturally I was intrigued by this title, and bought it to read -- what a letdown! This is book has no plot -- a woman loses her uterus, looks for it, gets scared that she'll never find it, then finds it. Big deal. It's completely improbable, but not even in a fun way -- reading about some guy using a power drill to try to re-open a woman's bloodless vagina, with skins shards flying everywhere, made me positively sick. This is not the type of thing where a woman will get it, and a man won't -- I'm a woman, and to me this book SUCKED.