Near Flesh - by Katherine Dunn

Book Synopsis

"Dunn's pieces have an almost irrepressible kinetic energy." --Alexandra Kleeman, The New York Times

A previously unpublished collection of stories about motherhood, violence, and desire, from the cult icon Katherine Dunn, the author of Geek Love.

A woman invests in a series of sex robots to get her off and comes to terms with the limitations--and real threat--of automated companionship. A knowing young student pursues an affair with an older man, the poet in residence at the university where she studies writing, and weighs the benefits and costs of their arrangement. A mother moves to a farm with her family and must come to terms with the violence simmering beneath her skin.

Near Flesh is the first and only collection of short fiction by Katherine Dunn, the author of the bestselling novel Geek Love. These nineteen stories are, like Dunn's entire body of work, attuned to the spit and grit of tough living. They pulse with yearning for a more prosperous life, for sexual satisfaction, to escape abusive husbands and the disappointments of convention. A better life, for these mostly female protagonists, seems always just out of reach. In Near Flesh, Dunn explores the struggle of women to live on their own terms, and the desire to relish--rather than squash--what distinguishes a person.

Review Quotes

"[Dunn's] collection is a welcome reminder that literature can be not only a showcase for polished, refined sentiment but also an arena in which both reader and writer grapple--with imminent challenges, with their own psyches, with the uncertainty of survival . . . Dunn's pieces have an almost irrepressible kinetic energy." --Alexandra Kleeman, The New York Times

"Violent, sensual, and at times delightfully off-putting . . . Dunn's provocative and unflinching commitment to black-humor in the face of the taboo is on full display in Near Flesh; this collection is unafraid to be nasty in ways that we don't often get to see anymore." --Mike Welch, Chicago Review of Books

"These 19 pieces . . . capture many of the curiosities, domestic anxieties and derangements that Dunn explored in her other work, often with pitch-black humor. Her characters stick with you: a woman who plans to have sex with robots, a troubled teenager who dreams of meeting aliens, a college student who has a thoroughly disappointing affair with an older poet. Prepare to be unsettled." --The New York Times

"Dark, funny, and compulsively readable. Even from beyond, [Dunn's] voice still cuts sharp. The collection reminds us why she remains one of Portland's most treasured literary figures: a writer who found beauty in the grotesque, comedy in the horrific, and humanity in the most unlikely of places." --Brianna Wheeler, Willamette Week

"Dunn gives ugliness a sense of worth, preferring her characters to be interesting and compelling in their ugliness . . . From her work, Dunn's reflected the fear of being trapped in one's circumstances and the unseemly quality of Portland in the 1980s. She responds to this fear, though, with a wink and sigh, daring her audience to understand her." --Grace Mangali, Street Roots

"[D]elightfully offbeat . . . Dunn vividly captures her protagonists' attempts to cope with the turbulence of their lives." --Publishers Weekly

"These sharp-edged, disturbing, often black-humored and unabashedly nasty stories will fascinate Dunn fans." --Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Katherine Dunn:

"Dunn's style is unlike that of anyone living or dead: simultaneously practical and bonkers; lovely and nasty." --Molly Young, The New York Times Book Review

"An expansive novelist giving voice to American estrangement." --Michael LaPointe, The Atlantic

"Nobody's sentences heave and breathe like Dunn's do. Her language scintillates and sheds its scales, revealing truths that nobody else dares to utter, or can." --Karen Russell, author of The Antidote

"Dunn's writing is dynamic and propulsive . . . Her didactic prose surpasses the spare, dispassionate style common among today's novelists. One is never bored." --Terry Nguyen, Los Angeles Review of Books

About the Author

Katherine Dunn (1945-2016) is the author of Geek Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Award, as well as the novels Toad, Attic, and Truck. She was an award-winning boxing journalist whose work appeared in Esquire, KO Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, The Ring, Sports Illustrated, and Vogue. Her writing on boxing is collected in One Ring Circus. In 2004, Dunn and the photographer Jim Lommasson won the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize for their work on the book Shadow Boxers.