The Flat Woman - by Vanessa Saunders (Paperback)

About the Book

In a world where women are scapegoated for environmental disaster, The Flat Woman follows a girl whose mother is jailed for "climate crimes," forcing her to navigate a society unraveling under absurdity and blame. Vanessa Saunders blends dystopia, magical realism, and biting satire to ask: who gets to call themselves a good person in a world built on systemic destruction? A bold debut for fans of Margaret Atwood, Maggie Nelson, and Bhanu Kapil.

Book Synopsis

Asks who gets the right to call themselves a good person in a morally bankrupt world

In The Flat Woman, women exclusively are blamed for the climate crisis. Seagulls drop dead from the sky, and the government, instead of taking responsibility, scapegoats a group of female ecoterrorists. When a girl's mother is incarcerated for climate crimes, she is forced to raise herself alone. As a young woman, she begins a romance with an environmental activist whose passion makes her question her own role in the world. By turns hilarious, deadly serious, and completely absurd, The Flat Woman asks who gets the right to call themselves a good person in a world ripe with disaster.

Driven by complex academic and moral questions, The Flat Woman is certain to appeal to fans of feminist and experimental literature, as well as fans of Margaret Atwood, Renee Gladman, Bhanu Kapil, Maggie Nelson, Kelly Link, and Anne Carson.

Review Quotes

"Surreal, funny, repulsive, and brilliantly thought-provoking, The Flat Woman is an example of what bold and original climate writing can do."
--Electric Literature

". . . The Flat Woman, Vanessa Saunders's debut novel. . . feels destined to find a cult readership."
--The Advocate

". . . We need more books like this one--to remind us of things that we've been dealing with, what we've been through before, and actually acknowledge the truth."
--New Delta Review

"Offering a critique on how power structures shift blame and avoid addressing the realities of climate change, The Flat Woman treads the line between reality and absurdity. Saunders crafts a world of relevant strangeness that points to a growing contempt for women amidst a dying world, raising the alarm on climate change, male privilege, and surviving in corrupt institutional systems."
--Southern Review of Books

"A thoughtful and affecting dystopian parable."
--KIRKUS

"Richly textured and chillingly poetic, The Flat Woman is filled with pure enthrallment. A mother, a child-like woman, an Elvis impersonator, and an aunt--all caught in an intricate web of seagull terrorism, spattered with ash and feathers--plunges the reader into an intricate and inscrutable collision of forces."
--Vi Khi Nao, author of Swimming with Dead Stars

"The idea of a 'feminist magic-realist ecological dystopia' sounds didactic, but Saunders deftly avoids preaching, instead showing us a simplified and constrained view of a world undergoing collapse in a way completely familiar."
--Country Roads Magazine

"This book packs a punch in only 160 pages. Provocative, engaging, and informative. We need this book more now than ever."
--Debutiful

"With deft efficiency, Vanessa Saunders lets a mini-matrix of motifs and characters mirror a society's worth of ecological, political, and personal crisis. A beautifully constructed work of feminist realism."
--Nell Zink, author of Avalon

"In addition to being highly original and insightful, [it] is also highly enjoyable, and it is a tribute to Saunders's imagination and deftness to pull off the world of The Flat Woman, a world which, like all dystopias, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to our own."
--Trampoline

About the Author

Vanessa Saunders is a professor of practice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her hybrid work, fiction, and poetry has appeared in Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, and [PANK] among others. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she received her MFA from Louisiana State University.