Annie Oakley's Girl

by Rebecca Brown

"One of the freshest, most memorable story collections of my lifetime. And 'A Good Man,' one of the most important. Rarer than the newness, the wit, the vivid readability, is the deep caring understanding, the wholeness, the truth which this astonishing, haunting writer creates her people. 'A Good Man' will be a revelation, an epiphany to many a reader."— Tillie Olsen "In Annie Oakley's Girl , people are so much larger, their motives, dreams and mysteries so much more complex than you ever imagined. Love is so much more dangerous, grief so much more powerful, hope so much more tenuous and necessary. I read everything Rebecca Brown writes, watch for her books and hunt down her short stories. She is simply one of the best contemporary lesbian writers around, and Annie Oakley's Girl is stunning."— Dorothy Allison "Brown's fourth ( The Terrible Girls , 1992, etc.) mixes fantasy, conjecture, and some realism in seven stories that feature atmospheric neo-feminist allegories and fables. The two longest pieces are the most "Annie" (originally published in Adam Mars-Jones's Mae West is Recent Lesbian & Gay Fiction ) is about the narrator's love affair with Annie Oakley—it's part historical pastiche, part touching daydream, and part biting satire. Juxtaposing the narrator's western daydreams with grittier realism, Brown manages to force upon her narrator the kind of rude awakening best displayed by Tim O'Brien in Going after Cacciato . She also has a good deal of fun along the in one instance, Annie Oakley signs autographs at Saks—"the release of her authorized biography coincides with the arrival of the special line of new fall fashions—Annie Oakley Western Wear." "A Good Man" (which first appeared in Joan Nestle and Naomi Holoch's Women on Women II ) is a tribute to a decent man dying of AIDS, nursed off and on by his lesbian friend; the striking "Folie a Deux" posits a couple who deliberately cripple themselves—one deaf, one blind—so that "Each of us had something the other didn't have"; and the remaining four stories, published in Britain in 1984, are dreamlike fables. In the best, "Love Poem," the narrator and "you," an artist (the second person becomes a tic in several of these), sneak into the Tate and destroy the artist's work; "The Joy of Marriage" is a touching but ideological look at a honeymoon; "Grief" is about a woman sent off by her clique to a foreign country—she never returns. Occasionally moving, the story's too obliquely personal to make enough sense to a wider audience. Imagistic, edgy fictions about postmodern longing in a world off its screws—and where sadness seems to be a woman's only fate."— Kirkus Reviews Published in 1993 by City Lights, this collection includes seven "Annie," "The Joy of Marriage," "Folie a Deux," "Love Poem," "The Death of Its Influence on History," "A Good Man," and "Grief." Rebecca Brown is the author of a dozen books of prose including The Last Time I Saw You , The End of Youth , The Dogs , The Terrible Girls (City Lights) and The Gifts of the Body (HarperCollins).

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Lesbian

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Rebecca Brown’s diverse oeuvre contains collections of essays and short stories, a fictionalized autobiography, a modern bestiary, a memoir in the guise of a medical dictionary, a libretto for a dance opera, a play, and various kinds of fantasy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_...

Reviews

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rep: lesbian mcs, gay side character

[Mary Emily O'Hara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not the only creepy girl in the world? Oh, Rebecca. I spent my childhood drowning barbie dolls and taking forensic photographs of the crimescene. I joke with my lovers that I want to kiss them until their faces fall off in chunks, then I want to slurp the bloody juice off their skulls. It could have been the Fangoria magazine subscription I sent away for at age ten, or it could be true that some people are just attracted to the bizarre and horrible in life. Rebecca Brown is one of those people.
In Brown's hands, love is the poisonous kool-aid that two people gleefully drink. The sweethearts in her short story "Folie A Deux" decide that in order to truly bond, one must burn out her ears and the other tear out her eyes. Oh yeah- and Brown's protagonists are often lesbian, but not in a cardboard way. Cowgirl fetishists, obsessive lovers, blind pianists, the groupies of contemporary art stars, and other painfully exact personalities dig their own graves in these tales of bizarre joy and ecstatic suffering.

[Red · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annie Oakley's Girl is a collection of really stellar short stories. I gave it three stars because I didn't totally enjoy reading this book - I found it difficult and emotional - but I think it's really high-caliber writing. SPOILERS a-comin! Some of the stories are wild - time-travel and fun things like that - and one, the second-to-last, and by far the longest story in the book (A Good Man), was an utterly heart-wrenching story about AIDS and its impact on queers. Unusually, it's told from the POV of a lesbian friend and caretaker to an infected man, throughout the progression of his disease and his death. It's searing; I sobbed and sobbed while reading it, feeling my own heart crushed in the loneliness, despair, anger, and fear that her characters experienced. What an incredibly talented writer to do that. Still, don't read it alone in the middle of winter.

[Liz Latty · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty much love everything she does.

[Basia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful emotional roller coaster with not a bad short story in the mix. My absolute favorite, one I have read many, many times by now: Folie a Deux. Forgive me if I misspelled it.

[Alexia · Rating 4 out of 5]

cool collection of short stories...mysterious and affecting.
Glad i found this at the thrift store!

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You say that, mostly, you just want to be true to yourself and not fix yourself into anything that’s not really you. Also, you want to consider me and do what’s best for both of us. Then you ask me what I think is important for me and what I want to do and I tell you:
‘I want to kill Napoleon.’”

I looooved 6/7 of the stories in here which is such a good ratio. Gave me some vibes of Ling Ma Bliss Montage the way most the stories were so absurd but so emotional and touching. Lowkey overuses the second person but I can look past that this time. “The Death of Napoleon” was by far my fav sooo strange and funny and sad I just loved it. exactly the book I’ve been wanting to read

[Agnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was feeling like this was okay-the writing was better than the story,
the Napoleon one was too long,
wondering how Dorothy Allison & Tillie Olsen blurbed this...

Then I got to A Good Man, which was heartbreaking.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Madeline W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars, even though the last third had me weeping. Love and grief are always lurking.

[Dana Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 4 stars - standout stories were “Annie,” “A Good Man,” and “Grief.”

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to wrap myself in Rebecca Brown's sentences for decades.

[Dawnelle Wilkie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird, fun, unsettling, quirky. Some of the pieces in this collection are very different than her (more widely read) Gifts of the Body and it's actually a good thing. While I thought that book was strong on its own, I was truly amazed at the originality and fresh disturbing images. Truly a wonderful book.

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read three of the stories in this book and then stopped after the one that begins something like: We decided that it was a good idea to burn out my ear drums and poke out my lover's eyes so that we would be completely dependent on one another. I had f**ked up dreams that night and put this book back on the shelf.

[Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

hidden find in a nicaraguan bookstore; and folie a deux, one of the best short stories i've ever read:

"in the interest of security we agreed to put out your eyes and burn the insides of my ears. this made sure we were always together. each of us had something the other didn't have."

[lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was enjoying this book but not loving it until i got to "A Good Man", which was gripping and sad and made me love it. Rebecca Brown writes often about sickness and death of the people she loves, and she does it well.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed Rebecca Brown's work. Her short stories are dream-like and intense. They reflect a reality that is more familiar to me than that of most other contemporary authors, with the possible exception of Murakami. When I got to the piece "A Good Man," I wept my eyes out.

[Cassandra Greenwald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love how Rebecca Brown pushes the boundaries and still stays true to the important elements of what can make a short story tick (and work). "The Joy of Marriage," "Folie a Deux," and "Grief" are all standouts.

[John Treat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories can be very well written, but still not interesting to the reader. "A Good Man" is the best, and had I read it 25 years ago I would have been struck, but I suppose that over the past quarter century I have just read that story many, many times already. Not Rebecca Brown's fault.

[Xio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting voice well written

[Maria]

Rebecca Brown always tears my heart up, but it's so good.

[Frankie Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bad girls should read this.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

a couple of short stories, and to me most weren't interesting. but the saving grace was the story "a good man", that heartbreaking story of a man dying earned the third star in my rating.