Paula Bomer

Inside Madeleine is a powerful, daring new collection about the curious, complicated relationships girls have with their bodies, with other girls and with boys. This eagerly awaited collection seethes with alienation, lust and rage. It's even more daring and accomplished than Bomer's first collection, which Jonathan Franzen described as 'like being attacked by a rabid dog - and feeling grateful for it. This is some of the rawest and most urgent writing I can remember encountering'.

Inside Madeleine

elif sinem

dnf @ 67%

Mainly I feel like this book had nothing to say on a fundamental level. As a result, every character, every setting, every story is a permutation of the other; after the first one, things quickly wear off and we're left with eminently unpleasant characters (but by no means *difficult*, as they are all one-dimensional), and a prose that has no flourish whatsoever. 

This wouldn't be a problem to me if there wasn't "two years", a short story following a 29 year old man having sex with a girl ten years younger complete with extreme detail about sex and nothing but contempt for the female character (yes, that's the story) and then right after follows "inside madeleine" in which the opening section details Madeleine's love for food in such a manner that you once again just feel the utter contempt. Then when **NSFW** madeleine got all sorts of infections because she inserted everything into her vagina including a rubber duck **NSFW** happened, i skimmed through, made sure its just a permutation of all the other stories, and I just deleted the book off my kindle.

Raw, intense short fiction that “delves into the most complex female territory imaginable and dissects until every honest bone is revealed” (Alissa Nutting, author of Tampa). From the author of Nine Months and Baby comes a daring new collection that seethes with alienation, lust, and rage. Inside Madeleine takes us from hospitals, halfway houses, and alleyways to boarding schools and Park Avenue penthouses, exploring the complex relationships girls have with their bodies, with other girls, and with boys. The title novella tracks the ins and outs of an outsider’s life: her childhood obesity and kinky sex life, her toxic relationships, whether familial or erotic—and her various disappearing acts, of body and mind.

Inside Madeleine

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