What do you think?
Rate this book
Slut Lullabies
Following her debut novel, My Sister's Continent, Gina Frangello continues her exploration of the power dynamics of gender, class, and sexuality in this collection of diverse, vibrant short fiction. Slut Lullabies is unsettling. Like the experience of reading a private diary, these stories leave one feeling slightly traitorous while also imprinting a deep recognition of truths you did not know you felt.
It is through beauty, horror, humor and chaos that Frangello has managed to pull these ten stories out of her deep understanding of the human experience. A gay Latino man whose pious relatives are boycotting his commitment ceremony' becomes caught up in hypocrisy and splendor when his lover's Waspy mother hires a glitzy wedding coordinator; a precocious girl seduces her teacher in order to blackmail him into funding her young stepmother's escape from their violent home; a wife turns to infidelity and drugs to distract her from chronic pain following an accident; a teenage boy attempts atonement in Amsterdam after having exploited his naive girlfriend at home; and a socialite must confront her dark past as her husband's deterioration from Huntington's Disease destroys both her bank account and social standing.
It is through beauty, horror, humor and chaos that Frangello has managed to pull these ten stories out of her deep understanding of the human experience. A gay Latino man whose pious relatives are boycotting his commitment ceremony' becomes caught up in hypocrisy and splendor when his lover's Waspy mother hires a glitzy wedding coordinator; a precocious girl seduces her teacher in order to blackmail him into funding her young stepmother's escape from their violent home; a wife turns to infidelity and drugs to distract her from chronic pain following an accident; a teenage boy attempts atonement in Amsterdam after having exploited his naive girlfriend at home; and a socialite must confront her dark past as her husband's deterioration from Huntington's Disease destroys both her bank account and social standing.
204 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2010
4 people are currently reading
561 people want to read
About the author
Gina Frangello
24 books202 followersGina Frangello is the author of the collection Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press 2010) and the novel My Sister's Continent (Chiasmus 2006), which was selected as one of the top 10 books of that year by Las Vegas City Life and was a "Read This!" finalist for Spring 2006. For more than a decade, Gina edited the award-winning fiction literary magazine Other Voices, and in 2004 co-launched its book imprint, Other Voices Books. She is currently the Executive Editor of Other Voices Books' Chicago office. Gina is also the Fiction Editor of The Nervous Breakdown (www.thenervousbreakdown.com) and her short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, recently including StoryQuarterly, Clackamas Literary Review, A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection, Prairie Schooner, Fence, and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader. She has been a freelance journalist and book reviewer for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
Read
July 14, 2020The stories in Slut Lullabies are very much about place, the places you come from, the places you are trying to get to and the places you actually end-up, all of which are constantly clashing for the characters in these stories. That said, these stories are about more than place, they are also about women, about the violence directed towards women every day and how matter of fact this violence is treated by these women. In fact, the women in these stories have come to expect violence merely because they are women and that's the way it is in the world we live in, a reality as crushing and sad as I (continue to) expect to encounter in any book, anywhere, any time soon.
May 4, 2011
This review was originally published at The Cult:
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/reviews/slu...
Gina Frangello is a dangerous writer. In Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press) she shares a collection of short stories that at first glance are light, humorous, and naughty. But upon deeper study she is the kind of storyteller that sidles up to you all white teeth and crimson lipstick, musky perfume and sparkling eyes, while she slips the blade of her knife between your ribs. This is a haunting compilation of work, gut wrenching, and yet funny, pulling you in with its laughter and sex appeal, and when you’re hunched over in the fetal position trying not to wet your pants as tears run down your face, the realization of what really happened washes over you, and it breaks your heart, shatters it, and stomps the pieces into dust. But with a title like Slut Lullabies could you expect anything less?
One of the things that Gina Frangello does really well is grab you from the first sentence. Narrative hooks, they never go out of style. Here are three examples of how she pulls you in, from 'Slut Lullabies', 'Waves' and 'Saving Crystal', respectively:
“I found out my mother was a slut from my best friend, at a bar with my secret Greek boyfriend who was possibly a homosexual and his uptight brother who pretended to know nothing of our affair.”
“Van tells me one of his students has written a story about a girl with a tracheotomy, whose English teacher breaks into her bedroom at night and makes love to the hole in her neck.”
“The last time I saw my dad beating Crystal she was two months pregnant.”
BAM. In the first example, the impulse is to laugh. Who calls their own mother a slut? It’s funny—dysfunctional, but funny, raw and honest as well. But over time, it takes on another meaning, the daughter realizing that she’d rather have a mother that got out there and had a good time than the dead-eyed one she has now, struggling to fight the sickness that drains her body of life. The second is a shocking visual, ridiculous in its imagery, funny if it wasn’t so violent and perverse. And maybe funny anyway. The third is straight into the darkness, an abusive father, witnessed by his child, beating on a pregnant woman, no forgiveness allowed of such low behavior. She runs the gamut with these opening sentences, a wide range of emotions, but always honest, never turning the camera away, forcing us to bear witness to it all.
But Frangello is smart. She breaks up the serious moments and heavy endings with a lot of humor. Sometimes the jokes are at the expense of her protagonists, and sometimes we laugh with her characters, aware of their own shortcomings, willing to embrace those humorous weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. Take for example these two passages from the story 'What You See' where none of the characters have traditional names, but instead are referred to as an Intelligent Woman or Macho Man, for example:
“The Aggressive Woman may also be referred to as: the Smoking Woman, the Skinny Woman, the Foul-Mouthed Skank, the Special-Education Teacher, the Adopted Daughter, the World Traveler, and the Survivor of Childhood Hodgkin’s Disease.”
And later:
“The Heavyset Man may also be referred to as: the Theater Major, Grisly Adams, Nature Boy, the Heavy Drinker, the Red-Faced Man, Sensitive Man, and Man-Suffering-from-Impotence-in-Times-of-Stress.”
Even in these funny moments, there is an underlying layer of failure, a sting to her wit.
Running us through the emotional wringer, Frangello opens her stories with intrigue, teaches us many things, makes us laugh, and then breaks our heart. As any good story should. From 'Slut Lullabies', speaking about her dying mother:
“With an intensity so rough it doubled me over, I missed the long-past squeaking of my mother’s bed, the muffled, complicit adult laughter that excluded me, that rhythmic pounding on the wall our bedrooms shared—the lullaby of my youth."
And in 'Waves' in response to her boyfriend getting ready to shoot her up with heroin:
“I don’t know how to explain that isn’t what I want, so I stop talking; watch him finish, showing me how. I imagine how gently he will slide the needle into my arm someday, like a father. I can trust him not to give up or give in to his conscience—he is the type to keep trying to scrape his way inside, until I can be certain there will be nothing left of me.”
And finally, from 'Stalking God' speaking about her long gone suicidal father:
“The incense here still lingers from Mass this afternoon. But Jayne prefers the Nag Champa she burns in her own apartment, the kind Blaine introduced her to—a smell so different from his smell, one that belongs to her even though he has gone away. She will not stay here long. But once, her father sat in this church, perhaps in this very pew with his teenage bride, both young and shiny and full of stupid, beautiful hope. She will remain just a little while, try to believe that she can feel him.”
In this collection of short stories, Gina Frangello holds nothing back. When you spend time with her and listen to these misadventures from her fictional youth, or broken adulthood, it is as if you are sitting with a close friend, at times horrified, backing away from her, and at other times, leaning in closer, to hold her hand, and tell her everything will be okay. Even when you know, deep inside, that what you say is not the truth. The intimacy that is created in these fearless stories is unique, an unexpected warmth, being allowed to know these secret lives, these failures buried under layers of shame, these dreams that lie fallow, no harvest in sight. But there is hope in here too, wisdom learned from falling, making ourselves stronger, and laughter at having gone through similar things, an understanding of how these things happen, how we all destroy our love at times, jump into bed with sultry strangers, and vow not to turn into our parents. Slut Lullabies is a powerful collection of fiction, a microcosm in the palm of your hands, the Alpha and the Omega.
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/reviews/slu...
Gina Frangello is a dangerous writer. In Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press) she shares a collection of short stories that at first glance are light, humorous, and naughty. But upon deeper study she is the kind of storyteller that sidles up to you all white teeth and crimson lipstick, musky perfume and sparkling eyes, while she slips the blade of her knife between your ribs. This is a haunting compilation of work, gut wrenching, and yet funny, pulling you in with its laughter and sex appeal, and when you’re hunched over in the fetal position trying not to wet your pants as tears run down your face, the realization of what really happened washes over you, and it breaks your heart, shatters it, and stomps the pieces into dust. But with a title like Slut Lullabies could you expect anything less?
One of the things that Gina Frangello does really well is grab you from the first sentence. Narrative hooks, they never go out of style. Here are three examples of how she pulls you in, from 'Slut Lullabies', 'Waves' and 'Saving Crystal', respectively:
“I found out my mother was a slut from my best friend, at a bar with my secret Greek boyfriend who was possibly a homosexual and his uptight brother who pretended to know nothing of our affair.”
“Van tells me one of his students has written a story about a girl with a tracheotomy, whose English teacher breaks into her bedroom at night and makes love to the hole in her neck.”
“The last time I saw my dad beating Crystal she was two months pregnant.”
BAM. In the first example, the impulse is to laugh. Who calls their own mother a slut? It’s funny—dysfunctional, but funny, raw and honest as well. But over time, it takes on another meaning, the daughter realizing that she’d rather have a mother that got out there and had a good time than the dead-eyed one she has now, struggling to fight the sickness that drains her body of life. The second is a shocking visual, ridiculous in its imagery, funny if it wasn’t so violent and perverse. And maybe funny anyway. The third is straight into the darkness, an abusive father, witnessed by his child, beating on a pregnant woman, no forgiveness allowed of such low behavior. She runs the gamut with these opening sentences, a wide range of emotions, but always honest, never turning the camera away, forcing us to bear witness to it all.
But Frangello is smart. She breaks up the serious moments and heavy endings with a lot of humor. Sometimes the jokes are at the expense of her protagonists, and sometimes we laugh with her characters, aware of their own shortcomings, willing to embrace those humorous weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. Take for example these two passages from the story 'What You See' where none of the characters have traditional names, but instead are referred to as an Intelligent Woman or Macho Man, for example:
“The Aggressive Woman may also be referred to as: the Smoking Woman, the Skinny Woman, the Foul-Mouthed Skank, the Special-Education Teacher, the Adopted Daughter, the World Traveler, and the Survivor of Childhood Hodgkin’s Disease.”
And later:
“The Heavyset Man may also be referred to as: the Theater Major, Grisly Adams, Nature Boy, the Heavy Drinker, the Red-Faced Man, Sensitive Man, and Man-Suffering-from-Impotence-in-Times-of-Stress.”
Even in these funny moments, there is an underlying layer of failure, a sting to her wit.
Running us through the emotional wringer, Frangello opens her stories with intrigue, teaches us many things, makes us laugh, and then breaks our heart. As any good story should. From 'Slut Lullabies', speaking about her dying mother:
“With an intensity so rough it doubled me over, I missed the long-past squeaking of my mother’s bed, the muffled, complicit adult laughter that excluded me, that rhythmic pounding on the wall our bedrooms shared—the lullaby of my youth."
And in 'Waves' in response to her boyfriend getting ready to shoot her up with heroin:
“I don’t know how to explain that isn’t what I want, so I stop talking; watch him finish, showing me how. I imagine how gently he will slide the needle into my arm someday, like a father. I can trust him not to give up or give in to his conscience—he is the type to keep trying to scrape his way inside, until I can be certain there will be nothing left of me.”
And finally, from 'Stalking God' speaking about her long gone suicidal father:
“The incense here still lingers from Mass this afternoon. But Jayne prefers the Nag Champa she burns in her own apartment, the kind Blaine introduced her to—a smell so different from his smell, one that belongs to her even though he has gone away. She will not stay here long. But once, her father sat in this church, perhaps in this very pew with his teenage bride, both young and shiny and full of stupid, beautiful hope. She will remain just a little while, try to believe that she can feel him.”
In this collection of short stories, Gina Frangello holds nothing back. When you spend time with her and listen to these misadventures from her fictional youth, or broken adulthood, it is as if you are sitting with a close friend, at times horrified, backing away from her, and at other times, leaning in closer, to hold her hand, and tell her everything will be okay. Even when you know, deep inside, that what you say is not the truth. The intimacy that is created in these fearless stories is unique, an unexpected warmth, being allowed to know these secret lives, these failures buried under layers of shame, these dreams that lie fallow, no harvest in sight. But there is hope in here too, wisdom learned from falling, making ourselves stronger, and laughter at having gone through similar things, an understanding of how these things happen, how we all destroy our love at times, jump into bed with sultry strangers, and vow not to turn into our parents. Slut Lullabies is a powerful collection of fiction, a microcosm in the palm of your hands, the Alpha and the Omega.
April 20, 2011
Gina Frangello’s Slut Lullabies was irresistible from the start. It begins with drunk rancor and a sororal, competitive friendship that ends in rape. In fact, there are rapes scattered throughout the book like potholes you fall into while eating a snow cone and that’s only the beginning. Frangello grabs hold of the reader and only tightens her grip throughout the book. There are marriages torn apart by infidelity, opiate addiction and self-loathing. Frangello’s ability to display her flaws repeatedly is her gift, and it’s in that ugliness where her prose shines supreme:
“A previously healthy rat may learn to run into wall, then cease to move or care altogether, if subjected to sufficient negative stimuli. There are things we tell ourselves. That guilt is a useless emotion.” (108).
In “Atilla the There,” we follow a teenage boy, Camden into the depths of a new life in Amsterdam where his mother has fallen in love with a handicapped lesbian poet. He’s confronted with his sexuality and guilt during a Queen’s Day parade when his Dutch girlfriend suggests a three-way before he leaves for America. The way Frangello understands the frailty of the human heart makes her characters sadness resonate.
The most brutal, and my favorite chapter is “Saving Crystal” in which a teenage girl attempts to save her young, pregnant stepmother from her violent father by seducing her teacher and blackmailing him. In her fury, her plan fails, but she is the one who escapes. Like an alchemist, Frangello dives into the fire and brings her readers gold. We are all richer for it.
“A previously healthy rat may learn to run into wall, then cease to move or care altogether, if subjected to sufficient negative stimuli. There are things we tell ourselves. That guilt is a useless emotion.” (108).
In “Atilla the There,” we follow a teenage boy, Camden into the depths of a new life in Amsterdam where his mother has fallen in love with a handicapped lesbian poet. He’s confronted with his sexuality and guilt during a Queen’s Day parade when his Dutch girlfriend suggests a three-way before he leaves for America. The way Frangello understands the frailty of the human heart makes her characters sadness resonate.
The most brutal, and my favorite chapter is “Saving Crystal” in which a teenage girl attempts to save her young, pregnant stepmother from her violent father by seducing her teacher and blackmailing him. In her fury, her plan fails, but she is the one who escapes. Like an alchemist, Frangello dives into the fire and brings her readers gold. We are all richer for it.
May 15, 2024
all stories are about sex and power, the ones in this collection are just particularly distilled. overall, a sexy but painful read
memorable quote from “What You See”—
“The Intelligent Woman failed both physics and trigonometry in high school because she was busy reading Anaïs Nin and scribbling secret poetry that did not turn out to be Any Good. She does not play chess. When her Husband discusses work too often, she cites his Presbyterian upbringing as though this is self-explanatory and necessarily a flaw.”
memorable quote from “What You See”—
“The Intelligent Woman failed both physics and trigonometry in high school because she was busy reading Anaïs Nin and scribbling secret poetry that did not turn out to be Any Good. She does not play chess. When her Husband discusses work too often, she cites his Presbyterian upbringing as though this is self-explanatory and necessarily a flaw.”
August 21, 2010
mmm-hhhhhmmm
Uneven collection of short stories. The excellent ones are beautiful enough to make up for the few that are obnoxious. Sometimes Frangello is too aggressive in making her readers question their assumptions, especially pertaining to sexuality; it can come off as forced, like someone who thinks they're being daring or shocking when they're not at all.
But she's a beautiful writer - she writes things like this: "He had long since given up on finding logic in what women bore for what they believed was love." Her characters are all richly developed, both the women and men (especially Camden in "Attila the There"), and when she's not being obnoxious she is either ripping you to pieces with a heartbreaking story or asking provocative, important questions, not just about gender and sexuality, but about human psychology and how we process and cope with pain and loss.
My favorites stories are "Slut Lullabies," "Waves," and "Atilla the There." Highly recommended. Trigger warning - there's either violence, rape, or emotional abuse in every story in this collection, often an upsetting combination of all three.
Uneven collection of short stories. The excellent ones are beautiful enough to make up for the few that are obnoxious. Sometimes Frangello is too aggressive in making her readers question their assumptions, especially pertaining to sexuality; it can come off as forced, like someone who thinks they're being daring or shocking when they're not at all.
But she's a beautiful writer - she writes things like this: "He had long since given up on finding logic in what women bore for what they believed was love." Her characters are all richly developed, both the women and men (especially Camden in "Attila the There"), and when she's not being obnoxious she is either ripping you to pieces with a heartbreaking story or asking provocative, important questions, not just about gender and sexuality, but about human psychology and how we process and cope with pain and loss.
My favorites stories are "Slut Lullabies," "Waves," and "Atilla the There." Highly recommended. Trigger warning - there's either violence, rape, or emotional abuse in every story in this collection, often an upsetting combination of all three.
November 22, 2011
I think I'm more lenient with my ratings on short story collections. And I don't say that to downplay me giving this 4 stars. It deserves 4 stars for sure.
Let me explain. To me, if a story collection delivers 2-4 excellent stories, you're pretty lucky. Usually there is 1 that is excellent and maybe 2-4 that are pretty good.
Slut Lullabies has at least 4 stories that I loved. And at least that many that I thought were really good. It's a great collection that really does offer a little bit to every one.
We are discussing the book over at ChuckPalahniuk.net right now. It's funny to see how some people have totally connected with stories that might not have worked for me. And those are their favorites. And the stories I absolutely loved, they thought were ok.
Let me explain. To me, if a story collection delivers 2-4 excellent stories, you're pretty lucky. Usually there is 1 that is excellent and maybe 2-4 that are pretty good.
Slut Lullabies has at least 4 stories that I loved. And at least that many that I thought were really good. It's a great collection that really does offer a little bit to every one.
We are discussing the book over at ChuckPalahniuk.net right now. It's funny to see how some people have totally connected with stories that might not have worked for me. And those are their favorites. And the stories I absolutely loved, they thought were ok.
May 16, 2022
Ups and downs, but well worth reading for the successful stories.
June 16, 2025
Devastating short stories about women, sex, power, and violence. These characters are vibrant and vulnerable and complicated. They are often making bad choices, or the best choices in bad situations, or no choice at all and just floating along. They are yearning and living and desperate.
There's plenty of humor and a thread of the erotic, but also the very real reality that sex is often a form of currency and sometimes the only form available to women and that violence or at least the possibility of violence underpins many interactions between men and women. These stories sneak up on the reader. You think you're reading something lighthearted, then there's a landmine and suddenly you're heartbroken.
I'd definitely like to read more from this author. She writes beautiful sentences and meaningful stories.
There's plenty of humor and a thread of the erotic, but also the very real reality that sex is often a form of currency and sometimes the only form available to women and that violence or at least the possibility of violence underpins many interactions between men and women. These stories sneak up on the reader. You think you're reading something lighthearted, then there's a landmine and suddenly you're heartbroken.
I'd definitely like to read more from this author. She writes beautiful sentences and meaningful stories.
April 29, 2023
There is something about this short story collection that feels... dated. Sure, it was published in the 2010s but there is a 80s Literary Novel sensibility to the women of Frangello's short story collection, a jagged rawness that smells of hairspray and cigarettes, and doesn't always come out feeling real. In my opinion the best short stories in this collection were the first two-- though the first needed a trigger warning for rape that almost made me close the book entirely-- while How to Marry A WASP left me with the breathless aching reality of a good literary fiction story that left all the others pale in comparison.
April 18, 2021
title story was good, 'what you see' brought memories of the early auster by using descriptions instead of names
April 16, 2012
I was excited to pick this book up at AWP, because I had read an enthusiastic review of it in the Time Out Chicago, the author is a Chicagoan who teaches at Northwestern, and I kept seeing nice reviews or mentions of the book online.
For all of those reasons, this is a book I really wanted to get behind (no pun intended, haha), but I just can’t do it. This is not a good book.
I’m going to focus on the second story in this collection, HOW TO MARRY A WASP, which focuses on the impending wedding/commitment ceremony of two gay men, a latino from a poor immigrant family, and a wasp from a rich family.
This immediately raises a few red flags for me. Don’t worry, I’m not squeamish, but Frangello is a white woman, so why write a story about two gay men? And it gets a little worse than that. A lot of the story is about, for lack of better phrasing, “the Latino experience in Chicago”. I live in Chicago, and race here is a complicated thing. Maybe Frangello lives in one of the gentrified or rapidly gentrifying areas along the Blue Line, and thinks she knows something about the Latino experience because of this? But she doesn’t. It’s offensive. She continually uses the terms “spic” and “wetback”, which is one of many, many things in this story that have little purpose other than shock value. The problem with using the word spic is that it’s too easy. It’s offensive, but somehow safe, especially when the POV character is using it to reference himself. Why not just write a story about black characters and use the N-word? Now that would make us REALLY uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t quite be safe.
And the sex stuff. Again, you get the feeling that Frangello thinks she is being edgy, or naughty, but there’s nothing close to groundbreaking here. Nothing here gives you the skin-crawling discomfort you feel when reading the best Mary Gaitskill, for example (speaking of Gaitskill, I was also bothered by the fact that this book looks like a bad imitation of Gaitskill's BAD BEHAVIOR, from the coloring and style of the cover, to the feel of the book, to the font choice throughout). There are a few reasons for this. One is that Frangello doesn’t employ simile or metaphor, which can be powerful in deviant sex scenes. Another is that there are no deviant sex scenes, in this story or in others in the collection. There is a date rape in one story, which is kind of in scene ("he entered me"), but come on. We are told of anal sex, endless blow jobs, characters who love to be tied up, abusive relationships, countless rapes, etc. etc., but I can’t think of a single instance in which one of these acts occurs, in the scene, with a POV character looking out who we can relate to.
Also, I’m sorry to say that Frangello doesn’t have very powerful sense of description. In a pay-off scene in this story, we watch a middle aged trophy wife urinate herself in an expensive dress. I can’t still can’t picture that little scene, not where the woman was standing, what she looked like, what she looked like while peeing herself, what her dress looked like, nothing. A good chunk of this story happened in the Uptown Theater, on Chicago’s north side. Uptown is a great place to set a story. Maybe the best neighborhood in Chicago to embody rugged beauty and mild sense of danger, too. And the Uptown theater itself is one of the few undeniably cool buildings in the city. And the story relies on the description. And it would be very, very cool to get an inside look at the theater. But she just doesn’t nail it. Just a few generic wedding descriptions, and we are left to fill in the blanks on our own.
Another problem is that there is way, way, WAY too much exposition, not just in HOW TO MARRY A WASP, but in every story in this collection. Do we really need to hear about the narrator’s abusive father? Isn’t this a cliché, even in this story? Do we need to know every character’s history? Frangello trusts that her edginess or naughtiness, or whatever you want to call it, will be enough to keep a reader engaged, but it isn’t. I need a scene that I can get lost in, or at least a character I care about. Or if the experience is going be about being uncomfortable, then I need to be really uncomfortable, and not just annoyed.
All of that said, I have to admit that HOW TO MARRY A WASP got me. The story pulls a surprise ending by turning an assumption we have made on its head. And Frangello pulls it off skillfully. It’s a very emotionally resonant moment. It’s telling though that the moment in question relies on character rather than situation or subject matter, which so little else in this book seems to. Based on that story, I might have given this collection a 3 or 4 star ranking, but the next story WHAT YOU SEE, brought me too my senses. That story should basically not exist. I think Frangello has good moments as a writer, and I’d like to see her working with subject matter that’s less constrictive.
I am going to post a review of Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior today also, because I pulled that book off the shelf while reading this one.
For all of those reasons, this is a book I really wanted to get behind (no pun intended, haha), but I just can’t do it. This is not a good book.
I’m going to focus on the second story in this collection, HOW TO MARRY A WASP, which focuses on the impending wedding/commitment ceremony of two gay men, a latino from a poor immigrant family, and a wasp from a rich family.
This immediately raises a few red flags for me. Don’t worry, I’m not squeamish, but Frangello is a white woman, so why write a story about two gay men? And it gets a little worse than that. A lot of the story is about, for lack of better phrasing, “the Latino experience in Chicago”. I live in Chicago, and race here is a complicated thing. Maybe Frangello lives in one of the gentrified or rapidly gentrifying areas along the Blue Line, and thinks she knows something about the Latino experience because of this? But she doesn’t. It’s offensive. She continually uses the terms “spic” and “wetback”, which is one of many, many things in this story that have little purpose other than shock value. The problem with using the word spic is that it’s too easy. It’s offensive, but somehow safe, especially when the POV character is using it to reference himself. Why not just write a story about black characters and use the N-word? Now that would make us REALLY uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t quite be safe.
And the sex stuff. Again, you get the feeling that Frangello thinks she is being edgy, or naughty, but there’s nothing close to groundbreaking here. Nothing here gives you the skin-crawling discomfort you feel when reading the best Mary Gaitskill, for example (speaking of Gaitskill, I was also bothered by the fact that this book looks like a bad imitation of Gaitskill's BAD BEHAVIOR, from the coloring and style of the cover, to the feel of the book, to the font choice throughout). There are a few reasons for this. One is that Frangello doesn’t employ simile or metaphor, which can be powerful in deviant sex scenes. Another is that there are no deviant sex scenes, in this story or in others in the collection. There is a date rape in one story, which is kind of in scene ("he entered me"), but come on. We are told of anal sex, endless blow jobs, characters who love to be tied up, abusive relationships, countless rapes, etc. etc., but I can’t think of a single instance in which one of these acts occurs, in the scene, with a POV character looking out who we can relate to.
Also, I’m sorry to say that Frangello doesn’t have very powerful sense of description. In a pay-off scene in this story, we watch a middle aged trophy wife urinate herself in an expensive dress. I can’t still can’t picture that little scene, not where the woman was standing, what she looked like, what she looked like while peeing herself, what her dress looked like, nothing. A good chunk of this story happened in the Uptown Theater, on Chicago’s north side. Uptown is a great place to set a story. Maybe the best neighborhood in Chicago to embody rugged beauty and mild sense of danger, too. And the Uptown theater itself is one of the few undeniably cool buildings in the city. And the story relies on the description. And it would be very, very cool to get an inside look at the theater. But she just doesn’t nail it. Just a few generic wedding descriptions, and we are left to fill in the blanks on our own.
Another problem is that there is way, way, WAY too much exposition, not just in HOW TO MARRY A WASP, but in every story in this collection. Do we really need to hear about the narrator’s abusive father? Isn’t this a cliché, even in this story? Do we need to know every character’s history? Frangello trusts that her edginess or naughtiness, or whatever you want to call it, will be enough to keep a reader engaged, but it isn’t. I need a scene that I can get lost in, or at least a character I care about. Or if the experience is going be about being uncomfortable, then I need to be really uncomfortable, and not just annoyed.
All of that said, I have to admit that HOW TO MARRY A WASP got me. The story pulls a surprise ending by turning an assumption we have made on its head. And Frangello pulls it off skillfully. It’s a very emotionally resonant moment. It’s telling though that the moment in question relies on character rather than situation or subject matter, which so little else in this book seems to. Based on that story, I might have given this collection a 3 or 4 star ranking, but the next story WHAT YOU SEE, brought me too my senses. That story should basically not exist. I think Frangello has good moments as a writer, and I’d like to see her working with subject matter that’s less constrictive.
I am going to post a review of Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior today also, because I pulled that book off the shelf while reading this one.
July 17, 2013
I like to post one of my favorite quotes from each book I read on Facebook, but it makes more sense to do it here.
"Beaming with the authority of a woman with her husband's checkbook in her handbag and her lover's semen warm and glowing inside her, Mom says, "I've so wanted you two to meet..." p. 167 Stalking God
"Soon she would be majoring in psychology, but she had been our shrink for years, and much later, in therapy myself, I would see that, like all great analysts, she had a certain ruthless immunity to other people's pain, just as a seasoned surgeon fails to gag when slicing through flesh and yellowed, bulbous fat to the blood and guts beneath." p. 7 Slut Lullabies
"In the fluorescent lights of the cruise ship bathroom, amid giddy tales of simultaneous copulation, the Intelligent Woman glimpses old acne scars embedded along the sides of her own face, like somebody took a smooth, clean picture of the Beautiful Woman and crumpled it up tight then left it there, ravaged under the glare." p. 53 What You See
"He did not ask his mother what the hell they were doing in Amsterdam when it seemed clear already that things weren't working out. He'd long since given up finding logic in what women bore for what they believed was love." p. 127 Attila the There
"Beaming with the authority of a woman with her husband's checkbook in her handbag and her lover's semen warm and glowing inside her, Mom says, "I've so wanted you two to meet..." p. 167 Stalking God
"Soon she would be majoring in psychology, but she had been our shrink for years, and much later, in therapy myself, I would see that, like all great analysts, she had a certain ruthless immunity to other people's pain, just as a seasoned surgeon fails to gag when slicing through flesh and yellowed, bulbous fat to the blood and guts beneath." p. 7 Slut Lullabies
"In the fluorescent lights of the cruise ship bathroom, amid giddy tales of simultaneous copulation, the Intelligent Woman glimpses old acne scars embedded along the sides of her own face, like somebody took a smooth, clean picture of the Beautiful Woman and crumpled it up tight then left it there, ravaged under the glare." p. 53 What You See
"He did not ask his mother what the hell they were doing in Amsterdam when it seemed clear already that things weren't working out. He'd long since given up finding logic in what women bore for what they believed was love." p. 127 Attila the There
November 12, 2010
In my head if Mary Gaitskill's writing and Philip Roth's writing were to meet, have sex, and create a baby, that baby would be Gina Frangello's writing. I choose Gaitskill because, like Frangello, she writes about women dealing with their sexuality and the power/control issues that go with it, and Roth because of the anal sex.
It's also no coincidence that I've chosen two of my all-time favorite writers as the imaginary parents of Frangello's writing, because after finishing her latest short story collection Slut Lullabies she's reserved herself a spot on the list. That's only because the official rules and bylaws of favorite author lists clearly states that you must read at least three books by an author before they can be granted favorite writer status.
Read More
It's also no coincidence that I've chosen two of my all-time favorite writers as the imaginary parents of Frangello's writing, because after finishing her latest short story collection Slut Lullabies she's reserved herself a spot on the list. That's only because the official rules and bylaws of favorite author lists clearly states that you must read at least three books by an author before they can be granted favorite writer status.
Read More
December 28, 2015
A gift from some generous twinsers.
I think Gina Frangello is really a fantastic writer and she’s someone I learned about in Chicago from other Chicago writers and eventually heard read/met back in the earlier days of me living here.
Her previous novel “My Sister’s Continent” (read in 2006 on Mariko’s and my flight to Australia) was really dark and nasty and sadomasochistic and brutal and really, really good.
These stories are, if anything, even darker. To the point where, WOW, some of them were really tough to get through. Some I liked despite their nastiness…some were actually too cruel for me, very hard to deal with.
I would highly recommend her novel–if you can handle the darkness–but I would tread lightly around these stories. And if you’re in a bad, depressed, emotional frame of mind, good heavens, people, do NOT read them then.
I think Gina Frangello is really a fantastic writer and she’s someone I learned about in Chicago from other Chicago writers and eventually heard read/met back in the earlier days of me living here.
Her previous novel “My Sister’s Continent” (read in 2006 on Mariko’s and my flight to Australia) was really dark and nasty and sadomasochistic and brutal and really, really good.
These stories are, if anything, even darker. To the point where, WOW, some of them were really tough to get through. Some I liked despite their nastiness…some were actually too cruel for me, very hard to deal with.
I would highly recommend her novel–if you can handle the darkness–but I would tread lightly around these stories. And if you’re in a bad, depressed, emotional frame of mind, good heavens, people, do NOT read them then.
January 24, 2011
Just after finishing a short story class in school I've decided to lean my reading a bit towards the short story collections I have sitting around.
I found myself conflicted about whether or not to like these, I don't know what order the stories were selected in but they seemed to get better as I went along. The next to last two "Attila the There" and "Saving Crystal" were probably the best ones in the book.
At about 180 pages it was a fairly quick read and of course with a short story you can sit down for a half hour or an hour and read one of these instead of catching up on another episode of American Idol or a CSI re-run.
So four stars I'll give it and I'll put Ms. Frangello's other book on a someday maybe I'll read this list.
I found myself conflicted about whether or not to like these, I don't know what order the stories were selected in but they seemed to get better as I went along. The next to last two "Attila the There" and "Saving Crystal" were probably the best ones in the book.
At about 180 pages it was a fairly quick read and of course with a short story you can sit down for a half hour or an hour and read one of these instead of catching up on another episode of American Idol or a CSI re-run.
So four stars I'll give it and I'll put Ms. Frangello's other book on a someday maybe I'll read this list.
July 11, 2012
Slut Lullabies is a collection of short stories that are light, naughty and humourous. This is a haunting complilation of work" The women in these stories have come to expect Violence merely because they are women. It begins with drunk rancor and a friendship that ends in rape, marriages torn apart by infidelity, opiate addiction and self loathing. Frangello dives into the fire and brings us the reader gold. I look forward to reading more books by Gina Frangello
October 16, 2014
trying really hard to make it through my to-read list. or at least the few dozen books that have been on it for more than three years. this is something I've been meaning to read for so long that somehow I tricked myself into thinking it'd be good.
it was not at all good. it read like someone's first attempt at writing edgy fiction, switching between genders and depictions of sex in order to.......make it seem intelligent instead of just trashy?
don't read this.
it was not at all good. it read like someone's first attempt at writing edgy fiction, switching between genders and depictions of sex in order to.......make it seem intelligent instead of just trashy?
don't read this.
August 5, 2016
This short story collection was breathtaking. I truly felt both anxious and intrigued as I was reading it. The author clearly understands each of the characters she writes about, and the stories come from a very dark yet likely place. Undoubtably these are all somebodies stories even though this is a work of fiction. I think brining light to such a taboo subject is refreshing and gives humanity to those who have been dehumanized. I would recommend this collection to others.
June 21, 2013
I like the writing style and the bold characters, but the situations in each story grew repetitive at times. Sometimes I'd reach the end of a story and have no idea what just happened. It's a quick easy read, and I'd recommend if you're a fan of Lorrie Moore, but none of the stories stood out to me as mind blowing.
July 27, 2010
This book puts a lot of things in perspective. Who are we? Does our gender, sex, home, etc. make us, or do we make us? This is something we must all decide.
The book was good, thought provoking and enjoyable.
The book was good, thought provoking and enjoyable.
October 5, 2010
Really gritty portrayals of women and their relationships to men. Love the Chicago and Madison settings. Fabulous character development, but not so much in the way of plots. Endings seem abrupt... almost an afterthought. Only made it halfway through.
February 25, 2011
I really really liked these stories a lot..the point of view was unique but familiar and yet...it kind of seemed like the book wasn't edited and by edited, I mean proofread. I thought at first I accidentally bought a galley but no. But, since I'm not picky, I enjoyed it anyway.
March 19, 2011
Triggers: sexual violence, eating disorders, child abuse. Really good on class uneasiness. I am not sure how I feel about the brand-naminess of the descriptions -- I kind of feel like Frangello scorns people who depend on the brands but expects you to recognize all the implications all the same?
Read
June 23, 2010Can't wait to read this!!!
July 10, 2010
Sweet win!!!
Cute short sexual stories.....could have been a bit more developed. But a nice one day beach read
Cute short sexual stories.....could have been a bit more developed. But a nice one day beach read
June 24, 2010
Ohhhh...can't wait for this one!!
October 16, 2010
A warm wonderful story teller.
December 8, 2010
In glinting prose, these stories offer a direct but never simple look at various forms of sexual and power relations. Really smart.
January 28, 2011
Honest, smart, tightly written, beautiful. This is how some lives go and this collection of short stories deserves to be read.
July 24, 2012
Some of the stories were good, others not so much.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews