Customer Reviews

Three Fallen Women

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Heck, it's an excellent novel, period, not just debut -- I just put "debut" in there because I felt like the title needed another word in it.

3FW tells the story of three different women with three very different lives and approaches to the events and circumstances they encounter, but who, even in their diversity, cope with somehow similar issues in their own ways. The meticulous writing style is an excellent contrast to the deep and universal issues addressed in the book and produces wonderful imagery, conjuring with equal verisimilitude scenes of joy or despair, conventional behavior or absurdity. A great read; hopefully one of many to come from this talented writer.

This book made my head spin. It was like reading a thousand little things that had happened to me or someone I knew and they suddenly made sense. I had to go buy a bottle of cheap wine and some cigarettes to stop my head from spinning. Excellent read.

Bold and daring. Descriptive, provocative and full of sensuality. Guth writes in a poetic fashion that is an important contrast to the harsh stories of these three woman. So New Media was smart in picking up this first time novelist. She has a very unique style in her expression and should bring the book world a crisp breath of fresh air. I look very forward to more work from this budding novelist.

Here's the thing, I know the author. She's a lovely lady. Imagine if I loved her and didn't love her book. That would be bad. Maybe not bad, but challenging. "I can't come to your reading, I have to retile my bathroom."

Lucky for me, I enjoyed this novel. There were times when the images were so shocking, that I set it down and walked away. But I always came back to keep reading.

I found the book to be a challenging read--it is intense, it is visual, it is poetic. The images she strings together are wonderful and you'll want to reread the section written from the bullet's point of view.

This is the way that post-post-modern is meant to be written. Read it, recommend it, give it to your favorite reader.

Amy Guth's debut novel is an extraordinary mix of poetry, punk rock, prose, politics, philosophy, science and religion. Skillfully, she weaves together the story of three fallen woman in language that brings texture, feeling, meaning and imagery to string theory and the interconnectedness of all things. In both big-picture and small-picture terms, Three Fallen Women will challenge your psyche; simultaneously, I prayed for salvation of each woman and revered them for their dysthymia and dramatics. Bizarre? Yes. Brilliant? Absolutely. Beautiful? Unquestionably. Indeed, Three Fallen Women may change your life.

Thick with physicality, written in language as multifaceted and fluid as the liquids and semi-liquids it so often describes - raindrops beading together, blood coagulating, paint swirling down a shower drain, globules of semen dribbling down a leg - this striking novel seeks to give a palpable, clutching voice to the emotional extremes experienced by three women. At one point, one of them reflects on an African ritual of "wailing days, when the women gather in a home and scream and sob the grief out of themselves," taking comfort in the physicality of the act, the way such gut-deep sound seems to push "grief out of the system, as it if were poison." (75, 76) It is an apt metaphor for this book, at once a torrent of expression and, in its precise stylization, a carefully crafted ritual of catharsis.

This novel is also, on the level of plot, a story of reinvention, of weaving oneself together after having been broken into scattered shards. One woman dips into opiates, another sliced open men's bodies with a scalpel, performing speedy surgery-in-reverse - "Vengeance for the souls of a million fallen women who never mustered up the ovaries to fly away," is how she describes her "campaign" of killing. (122) Another continues to quest after the happiness promised by myths of romance, or at least "being wanted for a companion, not a lay," imagining a Valentine pulsing beneath her flesh, muscles, and living cage of bones. (62)

Raw fears, desires, and hatreds are strung into such garlands of imagery. Early in the text a physical metaphor is offered for a theory of haunting, the idea that there are "slinking, ethereal ropes... constantly trailing behind us, thinning when we are on autopilot and thickening more and more as we get closer to our authentic primal selves." (17) Organic traces, smeared through the very spirit of the air - this is itself a useful metaphor for the energy that writhes and twitches through this book.

What can you say about a book that opens with ritualistic sexual burning? The whole thematic wad, pun intended, is shot in that scene, especially with the (non-)reaction of one of the "fallen" women. Yet, the images do linger; the points about choices (taken and not taken) are well made. A very good debut. Perhaps more like 3.5 stars.

Amy, you're awesome. Can I use that word again? Great job. I have to admit, I did get a little confused at some parts of the book, but everything came together. Have you started writing your next book?