Glory Goes and Gets Some: Stories

If you want to read a book narrated by protagonists who have suffered for their nonconformity, sensitivity, and intelligence, you will undoubtedly have many choices. But if you want your protagonist to be all this and FEMALE, you do not have many choices. Most female-narrated books fall into a few tiresome categories. To name a few: 1. The long-suffering wife/mother drama,involving abusive husbands, messed-up kids, elderly parents...basically the protagonist has little to distinguish her personality from the million other relationally-obsessed women going through these issues, resulting in a tame and tepid narrative voice 2. The irritating 'chick-lit' genre, in which the narrator drones on and on about her weight, shopping, and boys 3. Morality tales of 'bad girls' who've engaged in the same societally-disliked activities that many men do (drugs, sex, alcoholism, gambling, theft, etc.) but because they are female, their activities are considered less edgy and more sleazy/appalling. The book therefore, in order to teach this lesson (that men can misbehave but women can't without paying a dear price mostly due to their gender), involves the protagonist getting raped, pregnant, prostituting herself--all gender-specific maladies--before entering some treatment program and eventually (years down the road) becoming the sort of tame woman who would narrate #2. The narrator will feel guilt over her 'misbehavior', often blaming her poor treatment at the hands of men on her drug use rather than on her own personality, her ways of dealing with men, society's norms regarding male/female interactions, or on the individual men themselves. That being said, Glory Goes And Get Some is the ONE NOVEL I HAVE FOUND that doesn't fall into this tiresome trap. She is a complex character with conflicting motives (to be glamorous, to be controversial, to be liked, to be the one doing the liking, to be a participant, to be an adored spectator, to connect, to obliterate her desire for connection). Her analysis of others' similar contradictions (particularly the 'feminist' mother whose entire life is ruled by manipulating men to her own ends) is particularly brilliant. While Glory's acceptance of treatment center idiocy is a bit unlikely, even this itself is explained through her character's desperation for anything, no matter how silly, to cling to during difficult times. The reader will find some of Glory's choices infuriating, yet will cry at the direction her life takes, knowing it could not be otherwise. Upon finishing this book, I thought to myself, "Had Glory been born male, she would have been a celebrated character in one of the pantheons of druggie lit; perhaps a great writer or musician. As a female, her unconventional looks and disturbed brilliant mind condemns her to a life working non-skill jobs in Minnesota, battling HIV and enduring Narcotics Anonymous homilies." This is the true tragedy of the book. Those who dislike this book because of Glory's character--n

I bought this book in a second hand shop in Freemantle, Austalia and am happy to have discovered this writer. Her prose is beautifully crafted overall. Even the pieces that are a bit too whimsical for my taste ("Minneapolis", intro to "Falling Friends") have gorgeous bits. "Zemecki's Cat" and "Parachute Silk" are masterpieces that sucker punch you in the gut with their honesty and humanity. This writer has rare insight into human nature and respects her characters-- like Nelson Algren who is quoted at book's beginning. The stories flow and give a good sense of main character Glory's life, complete with spans of lost time, regrets, and hopes; a more conventional structure would have deadened this piece. Carter's voice is original; her work may appeal to fans of Algren and Raymond Carver.

"Glory" is an amazingly twisted tale of a twenty-something woman with everything and nothing at the same time. With humor, sadness, drama and randomness, the author takes the reader on a thrill-me roller-coaster, with lots of slow climbs and plummeting throw-your-stomach-into-your-throat falls. She challenges us to follow Glory down the paths she and she alone chooses, and Glory thereby becomes the anti-heroine we so desperately seek in other fiction. I loved every minute of this book, and can't wait to see more from Ms. Carter.

The opposite of "self-destructive" is "I want to live," and that is what the stories in "Glory" are all about about. Some of the pieces are fragmented, like shattered glass--and in the powerful voice of Emily Carter, you can hear the sound of breakage. The stories are about the will to not only stay alive, but to "get some," and the "some" is not merely sex or fulfulling physical needs. The "some" is Life itself. The glimpses of a woman defiantly striking out on her own to get off drugs are unforgettable. So what's it like anyway to come from a background of comfort and culture and end up HIV positive and a drug addict? This is what it's like. Emily Carter has created many, many brilliantly illuminated bits and pieces of what's essentially a survivor's story. Everyone will have favorite bits--mine is the nun who stole Jesus and the two ex-lovers who go on and on about a war movie, to find they were talking about the wrong war. Everything is sharp, vivid, heartbreaking, brave. The voice throughout is unrelenting in its honesty. You understand the main character's descent into self-annihilaiton; then you understand even better her other, second descent--into staying alive. None of it is easy; none of it is less than brilliant.

These funny, wise, irreverent, at times brutal, always insightful stories are an antidote to the light and fluffy trend of single-girl-looking-for-love-in-urban-America stories. Instead, Emily Carter gives us Glory B., a rich girl fallen from a life of privelege in Manhattan, journeying through the dark night of drugs, alcohol, HIV, and addiction, to emerge in passive/aggressive Minnesota, where all the kids are above average. Carter's fluid sentences and ironic perspective are reason enough to read this captivating book. Glory is a hip and trendy New Yorker transplanted by fate and failure to the midwest, where she discovers that there IS life after death and where she falls in love with the people there for all the right reasons.