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The Refrigerator Monologues Hardcover – June 6, 2017
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From the New York Times bestselling author Catherynne Valente comes a series of linked stories from the points of view of the wives and girlfriends of superheroes, female heroes, and anyone who’s ever been “refrigerated”: comic book women who are killed, raped, brainwashed, driven mad, disabled, or had their powers taken so that a male superhero’s storyline will progress.
In an entirely new and original superhero universe, Valente subversively explores these ideas and themes in the superhero genre, treating them with the same love, gravity, and humor as her fairy tales. After all, superheroes are our new fairy tales and these six women have their own stories to share.
- Print length160 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherS&S/Saga Press
- Publication dateJune 6, 2017
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-101481459341
- ISBN-13978-1481459341
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is Valente at her sharpest and most pointed, ably assisted by illustrations from comics artist Annie Wu (Black Canary)."
― -- Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
"Valente proves her adroitness with imagery and emotion in this extraordinary book of linked stories." ― -- Library Journal (STARRED REVIEW)
“In this novella, the superhero girlfriend gets to tell her own version of events in the afterlife. The women’s voices are strong: bitter and full of pain, yet steel-tipped in sarcasm and humor.” ― -- The Washington Post
""The real fun of The Refrigerator Monologues comes from Valente’s hyper-stylized voice, inflected by turns with pop, jazz, and opera as she moves from heroine to heroine, genre to genre. It’s by turns bitingly sarcastic and wistfully regretful, and always ferociously angry at the narrative in which this collection of women has been trapped.” ― -- Vox
"The illustrations by longtime comic artist Annie Wu are an extra gift to this heartbreaking series of stories. Don’t turn from their stories, no matter how hard they can be to hear. Verdict: Buy it, damn you, and listen to their stories.” ― - BookRiot
"It’s hard to single out one tale. They are all of a piece- and they expertly dissect a common type of lazy storytelling that still crops up far too frequently. It’s not about angry polemics; instead, these monologues have their own energy and life that is both painful and captivating” ― -- Locus Magazine
“Readers adventurous enough to parachute into unfamiliar literary territory will be rewarded by Valente’s biting wit, outlandish world-building and well-focused sense of outrage." ― -- Portland Press Herald
About the Author
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Product details
- Publisher : S&S/Saga Press; First Edition (June 6, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 160 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1481459341
- ISBN-13 : 978-1481459341
- Item Weight : 9 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,549,613 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11,985 in Folklore (Books)
- #25,040 in Science Fiction Adventures
- #36,477 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus and Hugo awards and has been a finalist the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, two enormous cats, four chickens, several spinning wheels with ulterior motives, an uncompleted master's degree, and a secret door in the back of her wardrobe.
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In Deadtown, an underworld inhabited by gargoyles and the dead, a group of women calling themselves the Hell Hath Club gather on a regular basis, always wearing whatever clothes they were buried in and reminiscing about the events that led them here. All are connected by the fact that they were once superheroes, girlfriends/lovers/wives to superheroes, or some mixture of both -- and all recognize that their existences were cut tragically short in order to further the stories of male superheroes. There's Paige Embry, girlfriend/creator of Kid Mercury who died during Mercury's first battle with his arch-nemesis; Julia Ashe, a heroine of fantastic power who was edited out of existence because her mentor and her male teammates were afraid of her power; Bayou, queen of Atlantis who lost her son to a supervillain and loathes how her husband sees their child as nothing more than a reason for vengeance; Polly, a psychotic fangirl of the villain Mr. Punch who ultimately met her fate at his hands, and others. All of them tell their stories with varying degrees of fury, dark humor, and resignation... and all find common ground with one another.
Valente has a knack for fantastic and quirky wordplay, and this book is no exception. And while some of the whimsy is toned down for this book, with Valente opting for a more realistic approach, it's still a joy to read. Her writing is vibrant and never boring, and she gives us plenty of her trademark imaginative imagery amidst the gloom and horror of these women's stories. And while quite a few of these women are thinly veiled copies of real characters from famous comic books (Polly and Mr. Punch are Harley Quinn and The Joker in all but name, Ashe's story is reminiscent of Jean Grey's "Dark Phoenix" saga from "X-Men," etc.), there's still plenty to make their stories unique and fascinating.
This book, short though it is, is less a cohesive story and more vignettes laced together with the framework of the Hell Hath Club... but it's still a fascinating and often cutting read. As evidenced by both the title and the author's afterword, it's heavily inspired by Gail Simone's "Women In Refrigerators," a list of female comic characters who are injured, killed, or depowered as a plot device to further a male character's story. And boy howdy, these women are NOT happy being relegated to plot devices to push their boyfriends'/teammates' stories along. This book is often scathingly furious, but for good reason... and it's certainly an eye-opener when it comes to how women are treated in fiction in general, and comics in particular.
The illustrations in this book, done by comics artist Annie Wu, are a nice accompaniment as well, giving us a look into the life of each girl and capturing the style of a comic quite well. It's telling that each illustration is focused solely on the women in question -- the men already have their stories, so it's high time the women got their share of the story, without having to compete with the men who have taken over their lives.
A short but powerful and important read, especially for comics fans, this is high on my list of favorite books by Catherynne Valente, and high on my list of favorite books period. If you enjoy comics, you need to read this book. And if you're upset with how women are treated in fiction, this book will make you angry but, regardless, has some valuable things to say about women who are sick and tired of being relegated to side characters and plot devices in their own stories.
For those unfamiliar with the trope, originating in the comic book genre, 'getting fridged' means that the character (almost always a woman) is killed, raped, de-powered, whatever, simply so that our main character (almost always a man) can gain depth through his suffering. The event has nothing to do with her story arc, and usually she's been developed as little as possible because girl cooties. Valente takes the trope and stands it on its head, with six stories (most of you will probably know the comics each story is based on) of actually getting fridged. There's a place in Deadtown where the Hell Hath ladies' club meets to tell their stories. But that's the problem. They're dead, so their story has been brought to a sudden end. Deadtown is eternal and static. It's always night, you go through the same motions over and over. There is still no catharsis, no path to continuing their character arc, because they're dead now, dressed in the clothes they were buried in, living on the memory of the taste of food. Sometimes it can be hard to read, because it's painful, and because nobody gets the happy ending they deserve. It's simultaneously literature and lit crit, and hopefully it'll shake up the way you view these stories.
Top reviews from other countries
If you love comics then I heartily encourage you to read this book - it's a much needed rebuke to those who casually use & discard women in any dimension (Real or Unreal), not to mention a quite visceral excoriation of those who treat characters as playthings AND REFUSE TO PLAY NICE (It's also extremely well-written and rich with homages to character & comics past and present).
If you don't love comics (and/or superhero fiction in whatever medium, this being the 21st Century) then reading this piece of work will hopefully encourage you to start, if only so you can uncover the true cleverness of this sequence of stories!
Ms. Valente, if you ever read this then Thank You very much for having written this book - I'd love to see more of this Setting, inside or out of Deadtown (hopefully that TV show will finally get its act together and make a worthy sequel of itself, but being greedy one would love to see the creator herself let her creations out for another run!).
Sadly I couldn't connect as much with the characters as I need to to really enjoy a book, but I did feel for these women and I got angry on their behalf.
I don't think Valente is the kind of author you should read when this sleep deprived, so the writing was kind of an issue for me.
But, once again, the main focus is the ridiculousness of always using women's suffering to further a superheroes character Arc and that message was loud and clear and impossible to miss. I kind of want to force-read this to my best friend who is so blinded by glorious Marvel, DC and the Fantasy Genre that he doesn't see it.







