Carrying the Body

This novel reminded me of _Pedro Paramo_ (by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo), another slim novel that explores death and life through small but powerful observations and voices. _Pedro Paramo_'s style is a little more straightforward, but the form it takes is no less confusing or beautiful than in _Carrying the Body_. In both novels, you are asked to think about the language, to fill in the holes that these writers have excluded on purpose, and to examine the form of the novel itself.

Dawn Raffel's first novel is a sustained pleasure of everyday objects viewed gravely in percussive, unimpeachable prose. The voice is full of sinister intelligence and hurt. This is the novel the literate have been waiting for.

This is a beautiful and original book. It would make a wonderful Christmas present for a discerning reader.

Here is something rare and beautiful, a wonderful Christmas present for discerning readers. A reader from New York

What sentences! "A girl and still a girl, and not a girl at a window, nightdress loose." Raffel wants a real reader. Even if her style is tight--Dickinson comes to mind, especially with the dashes--it continues to spring open. "The train's report, all mineral and animal." She's caught the sound of illness, the panic of childrearing, the clipped exchange of argument, the muteness of love. I loved it because it can be read and read, with all the hestiations in the world.