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SPRAWL
Finalist for The Believer Book Award, 2010
“Danielle Dutton’s unnamed narrator stalks through yards, streets, and her own house with such sharp perception that everything she encounters—cake trays, the doorbell’s ring, a dead body—becomes an object in her vast and impeccable still-life. Dutton’s sentences are as taut and controlled as her narrator’s mind, and a hint at what compels both (‘I locate my body by grounding it against the bodies of others’) betrays a fierce and feral searching. SPRAWL makes suburban landscapes thrilling again.” —The Believer Book Award, Editors’ Shortlist
“SPRAWL, first published in 2010, is a stream-of-consciousness collage of domesticity and intimacy, the unwavering assertion of a suburban woman’s individuality and selfhood that never loses its sense of humor.” —Lauren Kane, The Paris Review Staff’s Favorite Books of 2018
“A kind of Mrs. Dalloway in objects, a kind of performance piece melding stream-of-consciousness with commentary on photographer Laura Letinsky’s domestic still lifes, and at times one of the most philosophical accounts of contemporary suburban American existence and the ever-trenchant fetters of gender roles, Dutton’s SPRAWL is a book a reader might read in one sitting, but it will resonate for days to come—if not longer. . . . SPRAWL is that rare kind of book that will change one’s perception of what fiction can do.” —K. Thomas Khan, 3:AM Magazine
“Danielle Dutton’s unnamed narrator stalks through yards, streets, and her own house with such sharp perception that everything she encounters—cake trays, the doorbell’s ring, a dead body—becomes an object in her vast and impeccable still-life. Dutton’s sentences are as taut and controlled as her narrator’s mind, and a hint at what compels both (‘I locate my body by grounding it against the bodies of others’) betrays a fierce and feral searching. SPRAWL makes suburban landscapes thrilling again.” —The Believer Book Award, Editors’ Shortlist
“SPRAWL, first published in 2010, is a stream-of-consciousness collage of domesticity and intimacy, the unwavering assertion of a suburban woman’s individuality and selfhood that never loses its sense of humor.” —Lauren Kane, The Paris Review Staff’s Favorite Books of 2018
“A kind of Mrs. Dalloway in objects, a kind of performance piece melding stream-of-consciousness with commentary on photographer Laura Letinsky’s domestic still lifes, and at times one of the most philosophical accounts of contemporary suburban American existence and the ever-trenchant fetters of gender roles, Dutton’s SPRAWL is a book a reader might read in one sitting, but it will resonate for days to come—if not longer. . . . SPRAWL is that rare kind of book that will change one’s perception of what fiction can do.” —K. Thomas Khan, 3:AM Magazine
144 pages, Paperback
First published August 23, 2010
7 people are currently reading
1119 people want to read
About the author
Danielle Dutton
17 books155 followersDanielle Dutton's fiction has appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper's, BOMB, The Paris Review, The White Review, Conjunctions, Guernica, and NOON. She is the author of Attempts at a Life, which Daniel Handler in Entertainment Weekly called "indescribably beautiful"; SPRAWL, a finalist for the Believer Book Award in 2011, reprinted by Wave Books with an Afterword by Renee Gladman in 2018; Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera, a book of collages by Richard Kraft; and the novel Margaret the First. In 2010, Dutton co-founded the feminist press Dorothy, a publishing project, named for her great aunt Dorothy, a librarian who drove a bookmobile through the back hills of southern California. Over the past decade, the press has published the work of Renee Gladman, Leonora Carrington, Cristina Rivera Garza, Barbara Comyns, Jen George, Amina Cain, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Sabrina Orah Mark, Nathalie Leger, and other innovative writers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
September 6, 2017
We bulldoze small and inconvenient fields of strawberries or corn and replace them with the increasing complexity of everyday life: promised lands, the right of “choice”, boundaries, color-schemes, paper mills, etc.
Everything about this book screams. The cerulean sky book cover, contrailed and disrupted by lonely airliner shouts for attention. The single paragraph, 140-page narrative told by protagonist Mrs. Robertson is eardrum piercing in its dead-on, compact sentences that combine in a depth charge force. This must be what it is like to read a book in a single sitting in a room immediately after the discharge of a flash grenade. Even the title with its extra spacing between letters is necessary. This is sprawl, after all. We need the room.
I lived for many years in far north Dallas, Texas – a place where suburban sprawl has its own level of personification that feels almost sinister. Driving up the toll road there comes a time where the exits are interchangeable; the mega-malls, chain restaurants and housing developments are a blueprint for cultural death and meth addiction. It nearly killed me to get out of that environment. I would occasionally drive to work in the morning and look at the perfect lawns, the cookie-cutter homes and wonder how the fathers/husbands, wives/mothers that inhabited that environment viewed their lives, because I knew I hated mine. I’m certainly not saying that everyone in Suburban Sprawl experiences the world the way that Danielle Dutton has described in this book. But I have to believe that many have and do.
An American horror story? Yes.
It’s all in the eye, the beauty of the suburbs, its sharp whitish light, the lack of logical relationships…
April 1, 2015
After reading this, I can see why, as Mike describes in his
excellent review, this author's Attempts at a Life is nearly a book of epigrams and prose poems. That is really where Dutton's strength lies. There are so many great lines in this, especially in the first half. Unfortunately, I don't think that was quite sufficient to sustain the length of the book. Despite taking breaks in my reading (a tad difficult, given the momentum of the prose, but necessary to keep from ODing on the style) I found myself growing bored in the second half. Dutton seemed to have used up the better lines, the more amusing lists of banal objects on her table, the more plausible lists of words spoken in conversation. In the first half we have absurdist but still meaningful passages like this letter (the letters were some of my favorite bits)
There are dirty dishes in the sink and a rice cooker on the floor. So I decide to count the number of steps from our front door to the first duck standing upright. Perhaps this decline is intentional, a reflection of the wife's interior state, her marriage, etc but it made reading the final third a bit if a chore.
I don't want to sound like I'm slamming the book, though -- I enjoyed it very much to start and thought it was a clever, well-conceived project.
excellent review, this author's Attempts at a Life is nearly a book of epigrams and prose poems. That is really where Dutton's strength lies. There are so many great lines in this, especially in the first half. Unfortunately, I don't think that was quite sufficient to sustain the length of the book. Despite taking breaks in my reading (a tad difficult, given the momentum of the prose, but necessary to keep from ODing on the style) I found myself growing bored in the second half. Dutton seemed to have used up the better lines, the more amusing lists of banal objects on her table, the more plausible lists of words spoken in conversation. In the first half we have absurdist but still meaningful passages like this letter (the letters were some of my favorite bits)
In particular, Mrs Henry, allow me to address you on the subject of nice lawns and nice people, hardworking people, neighbors within a neighborhood, people who take care of their lawns, etc. There are those who believe your front yard is currently implicated in several disruptive notions of “utility, chaos, and a lack of concern for the opinions of others.” This is the kind of attitude we prefer reserved for the back yard. In the front yard, Mrs Henry, we aim for a distinctly American, park-like ideological space, a classic composition in which the individual cares for his lawn for the benefit of the connectivity and industriousness of the entire community.to lines which merely reflect yet again the pointlessness of the narrator's existence.
There are dirty dishes in the sink and a rice cooker on the floor. So I decide to count the number of steps from our front door to the first duck standing upright. Perhaps this decline is intentional, a reflection of the wife's interior state, her marriage, etc but it made reading the final third a bit if a chore.
I don't want to sound like I'm slamming the book, though -- I enjoyed it very much to start and thought it was a clever, well-conceived project.
March 24, 2017
Liked its associative, suggestive, quirky plotlessness about a woman's psychogeographical experience of life in the suburbs with husband Haywood -- the best named character in a while. But it became cloyingly clever/cute after twenty or thirty pages. Was always aware I was reading what felt like creative writing, "an interesting approach to narrative." Enjoyed it more when envisioning the narrator as a Fred Armisen character from Portlandia. Not for me, ultimately, but I can see how some may love it.
February 1, 2015
Fucking brilliant.
April 27, 2014
Suburban sprawl is a phenomenon that has the power to overtake landscapes and transform city limits, creating a sense of decentralization, which as a result births discontinuity and uncertainty regarding the boundaries of urban development. In her book Sprawl, Danielle Dutton writes toward the space inhabited by the architectural takeover of excessive urban development. Domesticated by Dutton’s language, Sprawl is an encapsulation of creature comforts, home appliances, household objects and simplistically gestures at mundane relationships. The notion of an adopted materialistic identity arises in the text as a result of residing within the vectors of architectonic construction. Sprawl conveys the effects of suburbia on a woman in a failing marriage, highlighting its atmosphere of constant entertainment. The constant sense of distraction acts as a buffer to prevent her from touching her pain deeply and remaining raveled in the cyclical nature of satisfaction, dissatisfaction and consumerism.
The form of Sprawl reflects the content matter, running on with no paragraph breaks for one hundred and forty pages to mirror the constant list that festers in the text. The text is entirely comprised of lists of objects and actions which work together to fabricate the life of a middleclass woman contained in an immensely long paragraph. The book itself is a squarish shape which relates to the slang phrase “don’t be a square,” meaning don’t be typical and traditional, which is the primary the content of the book: normality and its confinement. The run-on paragraph that composes the novella is a form of entrapment, making it difficult for readers to escape the text, an individual must read straight through it or they run the risk of not being able to reenter the narrative. The narrator states that “We watch the evening news and learn about weather, competitive ping-pong, hot air balloons, war and the latest scandals,” a seemingly simple statement that mirrors exactly how the story is structured, an unending sequence of events and objects which simulates the format of television programming (Dutton 24).
The momentum of the book is contradicting, being both simultaneously leisurely and excessive while building pace overtime to create a reading experience akin to tunnel vision. The lack of paragraph breaks, the fragmented dialogue and topic matter present the reader with a discontinuity that is almost difficult to penetrate. As the text progresses, items seem to surface and disappear and words begin to blur to form a static compilation that portrays how objects accumulate and become amorphous within a collection. The intention of this book pivots on the notion of an object, location or person that always changes and can be viewed in a new light upon each encounter. Stated within the jacket of the book, the novel was “Inspired by a series of domestic still life photographs.” This fixation on the normality of life presents an opportunity to meditate on everyday objects and relinquish oneself from functional fixedness. Dutton effectively presents objects and situations in a stream of consciousness style prose that leaves readers drifting within a sea of banality.
Another theme that arose from the text was the identification with yearning and how this sense of a need for more fuels urban living and promotes consumerism. There is no driving force in the narrator’s character or a tonality of excessive yearning but she makes subtle observations that recognize an external force of desire present in her surroundings. The narrator states, “The book says pearls, shells and certain precious man-made objects can assist in scenarios of craving,” which functions as an acknowledgement of the superficiality that modern society deems as satisfaction (Dutton 20). Jewels, bobbles and materialism function as replacements for the inherent discomfort in life, at least for those who can afford them; the notion of supplementing negative emotions with consumer good is an illusion and false ideal of the middle class that also pervades the minds of the lower class. Additionally the unnamed narrator links herself to her household possessions, verbalizing that “The small boxes glint in the half-light as I place them in specific patterns, as markers of my own personal history” (Dutton 21). Her differentiation between objects being markers of her experiences and not an embodiment of herself shows a healthy sense of separation, which makes her different from most suburban dwellers, leaving a brief glimmer of in regards to her sense of personhood.
The form of Sprawl reflects the content matter, running on with no paragraph breaks for one hundred and forty pages to mirror the constant list that festers in the text. The text is entirely comprised of lists of objects and actions which work together to fabricate the life of a middleclass woman contained in an immensely long paragraph. The book itself is a squarish shape which relates to the slang phrase “don’t be a square,” meaning don’t be typical and traditional, which is the primary the content of the book: normality and its confinement. The run-on paragraph that composes the novella is a form of entrapment, making it difficult for readers to escape the text, an individual must read straight through it or they run the risk of not being able to reenter the narrative. The narrator states that “We watch the evening news and learn about weather, competitive ping-pong, hot air balloons, war and the latest scandals,” a seemingly simple statement that mirrors exactly how the story is structured, an unending sequence of events and objects which simulates the format of television programming (Dutton 24).
The momentum of the book is contradicting, being both simultaneously leisurely and excessive while building pace overtime to create a reading experience akin to tunnel vision. The lack of paragraph breaks, the fragmented dialogue and topic matter present the reader with a discontinuity that is almost difficult to penetrate. As the text progresses, items seem to surface and disappear and words begin to blur to form a static compilation that portrays how objects accumulate and become amorphous within a collection. The intention of this book pivots on the notion of an object, location or person that always changes and can be viewed in a new light upon each encounter. Stated within the jacket of the book, the novel was “Inspired by a series of domestic still life photographs.” This fixation on the normality of life presents an opportunity to meditate on everyday objects and relinquish oneself from functional fixedness. Dutton effectively presents objects and situations in a stream of consciousness style prose that leaves readers drifting within a sea of banality.
Another theme that arose from the text was the identification with yearning and how this sense of a need for more fuels urban living and promotes consumerism. There is no driving force in the narrator’s character or a tonality of excessive yearning but she makes subtle observations that recognize an external force of desire present in her surroundings. The narrator states, “The book says pearls, shells and certain precious man-made objects can assist in scenarios of craving,” which functions as an acknowledgement of the superficiality that modern society deems as satisfaction (Dutton 20). Jewels, bobbles and materialism function as replacements for the inherent discomfort in life, at least for those who can afford them; the notion of supplementing negative emotions with consumer good is an illusion and false ideal of the middle class that also pervades the minds of the lower class. Additionally the unnamed narrator links herself to her household possessions, verbalizing that “The small boxes glint in the half-light as I place them in specific patterns, as markers of my own personal history” (Dutton 21). Her differentiation between objects being markers of her experiences and not an embodiment of herself shows a healthy sense of separation, which makes her different from most suburban dwellers, leaving a brief glimmer of in regards to her sense of personhood.
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July 30, 2017Delightfully weird, inexplicably compelling, and laugh-out-loud funny. One single 140-page paragraph that reminded me of nothing so much as an impressionist painting, hundreds of images arranged like dots on a canvas that are just dots but, taken as a whole when you step back, convey a scene of light, color, shadow, and sounds that make a world and a mood. Takes stream-of-consciousness to a whole other level. I almost bailed at page 20, was drawn along almost against my will, and was ultimately glad I stayed with it. I would recommend it, however, to almost no one. Enter at your own risk.
Want to read
December 7, 2015"Danielle Dutton’s S P R A W L reads as if Gertrude Stein channeled Alice B. Toklas writing an Arcades Project set in contemporary suburbia."
UhWHAT? Okay sold.
Or, more elegantly, from our dear Proustitute:
"A kind of Mrs. Dalloway in objects, a kind of performance piece melding stream-of-consciousness with commentary on photographer Laura Letinsky’s domestic still lifes, and at times one of the most philosophical accounts of contemporary suburban American existence and the ever-trenchant fetters of gender roles, Dutton’s S P R A W L is a book a reader might read in one sitting, but it will resonate for days to come—if not longer. Dutton is already a promoter of women’s writing via Dorothy, a publishing project; however, while some of the writers whom Dorothy has published or reprinted—e.g., Nell Zink, Amina Cain, Barbara Comyns, and 3:AM’s own Joanna Walsh—have been receiving deserved praise, to my mind, Dutton’s own work has slipped past readers’ attentions. S P R A W L is that rare kind of book that will change one’s perception of what fiction can do, of what narrative can accomplish, and just how many voices make up one lone voice: it’s a celebration of the incessant interior chorus that is the examined, literary, artistic life."
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/top-re...
UhWHAT? Okay sold.
Or, more elegantly, from our dear Proustitute:
"A kind of Mrs. Dalloway in objects, a kind of performance piece melding stream-of-consciousness with commentary on photographer Laura Letinsky’s domestic still lifes, and at times one of the most philosophical accounts of contemporary suburban American existence and the ever-trenchant fetters of gender roles, Dutton’s S P R A W L is a book a reader might read in one sitting, but it will resonate for days to come—if not longer. Dutton is already a promoter of women’s writing via Dorothy, a publishing project; however, while some of the writers whom Dorothy has published or reprinted—e.g., Nell Zink, Amina Cain, Barbara Comyns, and 3:AM’s own Joanna Walsh—have been receiving deserved praise, to my mind, Dutton’s own work has slipped past readers’ attentions. S P R A W L is that rare kind of book that will change one’s perception of what fiction can do, of what narrative can accomplish, and just how many voices make up one lone voice: it’s a celebration of the incessant interior chorus that is the examined, literary, artistic life."
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/top-re...
February 9, 2012
I should make a disclaimer on this review that I am a graduate student engaged in a research project which determines how literary discussions of suburbia engage with postmodern theory on space. So I was reading this book with a pretty specific lens in mind.
And I freaking loved it.
I think this book would appeal to people who couldn't care less about any of the things I mentioned as well, so don't get me wrong. I recommend it. But if you like things like many distinct characters, clarity of plot, sequentiality, or paragraph breaks...go read a different book. Go read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, because it's really good in a really similar way, but it has all those things.
I thought the structure of this book was lush for the subject. I feel like any attempt to explain why would ruin the experience of reading the book, though I do suggest taking the one or two hours necessary to read the book in a single sitting. I did that, and I can't imagine have attempting to read it in multiple sittings. So much would be lost.
And I freaking loved it.
I think this book would appeal to people who couldn't care less about any of the things I mentioned as well, so don't get me wrong. I recommend it. But if you like things like many distinct characters, clarity of plot, sequentiality, or paragraph breaks...go read a different book. Go read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, because it's really good in a really similar way, but it has all those things.
I thought the structure of this book was lush for the subject. I feel like any attempt to explain why would ruin the experience of reading the book, though I do suggest taking the one or two hours necessary to read the book in a single sitting. I did that, and I can't imagine have attempting to read it in multiple sittings. So much would be lost.
March 28, 2021
You think, "There is no such thing as a perfect sentence," and then Danielle Dutton writes a few hundred of them.
October 15, 2010
This is a devastatingly funny and brilliant book that would totally destroy my fragile aspiring-writer ego if it weren't so damn pleasurable to read. I was smiling ear to ear the whole time and frequently laughing out loud, especially at the narrator's letters to her fellow suburban citizens. A seamless, prose-poem-dense satire of the American subdivision landscape and the inane, hilarious consumerism it inspires in its inhabitants. Dutton's tone reminds me of the garrulous, affable narrator of Lyn Hejinian's A Border Comedy and the intrepid, enthusiastic essay-narrator of Lisa Robertson's Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture; in SPRAWL, the soft architecture of exterior building decoration (reminiscent of the surface images that architect Thomas Sieverts calls for to beautify drab exurban cityscapes) is transformed into post-Eisenhower-era still lifes of tables, countertops, and poolside barbeques spilling over with an absurd plenitude of foodstuffs. Is this a moral allegory of suburban decay, or of infinite suburban repeatability? I think of Jacques Tati and his comedies about citizens clashing with the outsized scale of their modern environments. But Dutton's clash of scale includes time as well, and that is where I agree with the reviewer below about SPRAWL being a terrifying book. I read it slowly over two weeks, but absorbed several centuries' worth of sensations & ideas in the process. This book will be pinging around like a tiny silver ball in my intuitive subconscious for a very long time.
December 18, 2018
So relevant to the post-domesticated human experience. A commanding, wild, beyond anything I've read bang-up of a book.
May 2, 2022
on page 69: "still, each day is touched by loving lists of mundane objects. i make all sorts of ordinary choices."
April 21, 2016
A single paragraph of barely-connected images and scenes that capture the slow motion crawl of thousands of tiny flashing things going by your mind's eye in a gently settling flurry of dust motes blown by sun-drenched suburban visions that breathe in security and out anxiety in specific rooms, streets, geospatial coordinates, and varying states of sexual conditions, ranging from forthright to the brutal socialist honesty of power mismanaged and unforgiven, as each period reaches around itself in the cascade of discrete thoughts for connections to any of the sentences before or after, sometimes connecting, but never allowed to gel into stiffness, always encouraged forward like tiny animals new born into startling completion, then displayed, each thought like a tiny jewel, inset in an array of magnificent difference, and as you look closer at sentence after sentence, following each other like a slideshow that fell to the floor and into a heap of lovely accidents, you see each phrase as a small miracle of concise self-contained consciousness, suspended in a dense foam of like sentences that all make perfect sense, that all are easy to get, needing nothing, coming from nowhere, and going anywhere the reader cares to look. Yes, it's better than I can describe, as a book beyond all compare, a nonesuch in the bookshelf of human thought.
January 12, 2011
I have to admit that the first reading didn't sit well with me. I found it so unlike anything that I've ever read and couldn't quite wrap my brain around it. I read a second time and sparks flew. I found wit, commentaries, observations, and humor. I enjoyed the here and now of each sentence and the playful use of words. I'll be reading it a third time I think.
July 3, 2012
S P R A W L is one of my favorite contemporary novels. I desperately need to read more of Dutton. She is a supreme talent. Love this book. I wrote more about it here.
February 16, 2016
This book is pure magnificence. If you like/love Lisa Robertson, Lyn Hejinian, and Gertrude Stein with a dash of Kathleen Stewart's "Ordinary Affects," I highly recommend it! I swam in Dutton's prose. I didn't ever want it to end.
July 14, 2010
Absolutely amazing! One of the best books I've read this year!
January 30, 2023
Completing this 13 year-old novella that I added to my list 6ish years ago has unexpectedly activated my writing mode, so:
SPRAWL is a beautiful bit of circuit scrambling, should one find oneself feeling like sentences these days just make too much sense (they do).
In a review of Dutton's other (great) book, Margaret the First, a New Yorker contributor described SPRAWL as "an ekphrastic meditation on the aesthetics of American suburbs." Because I'm not a casual language terrorist who uses words like ekphrastic, I looked it up and learned that ekphrasis is the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device. Fine. I would have said "a lot like Gertrude Stein, if you know what I mean" and even that sounds pretentious but we do the best we can with what we're given.
The prose in SPRAWL can be very disorienting. But the surreal, collage-y quality makes a lot more sense, vibe-wise, once you know what visual art Dutton is referencing through her use ofekphrasis nope. Graciously, Dutton notes in the acknowledgments section that Laura Letinsky's still life photographs in Hardly More than Ever: Photographs 1997-2004 "were instrumental to the imagining of SPRAWL", along with references including Stein (hey!), Thoreau, Perec, Charlotte Brontë, a treatise on lawns, Barthes, and about 45 others I don't know. There's a low-res PDF available of the monograph on the photographer's website. It makes for a lovely companion piece and a very seductive rabbit hole where you will find me for the next day or so. It was all worth it.
SPRAWL is a beautiful bit of circuit scrambling, should one find oneself feeling like sentences these days just make too much sense (they do).
In a review of Dutton's other (great) book, Margaret the First, a New Yorker contributor described SPRAWL as "an ekphrastic meditation on the aesthetics of American suburbs." Because I'm not a casual language terrorist who uses words like ekphrastic, I looked it up and learned that ekphrasis is the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device. Fine. I would have said "a lot like Gertrude Stein, if you know what I mean" and even that sounds pretentious but we do the best we can with what we're given.
The prose in SPRAWL can be very disorienting. But the surreal, collage-y quality makes a lot more sense, vibe-wise, once you know what visual art Dutton is referencing through her use of
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August 21, 2025fav quotes
In the morning head I look like pudding, or I sound like a mosquito squeaking under a mattress, or I fuck like a secretary with her hands full of paper
What he finally decides is that what we have is a kind of awkwardness worth saving
I stuffed my nose in the grass, Mr. Surgeon General, and it sank down, motionless, and lay for a second on something vaguely round right down there near the path. I wanted to tell you, my body is an inhospitable host for any living thing—even colds.
Of course, every man I know knows much less than I know, which is why they want to know me, but it means they’ll have difficulty performing without feeling foolish, for hours even.
What will become of us? There is a ruthless realism to the way we breathe, the way we sit at a table, the way we fuck, or eat breakfast, or sleep next to each other or next to thousands of strangers. This place has forgotten people living in other towns. We hardly recognize ourselves.
I measure my memories and gestures and meditate on decay
In the morning head I look like pudding, or I sound like a mosquito squeaking under a mattress, or I fuck like a secretary with her hands full of paper
What he finally decides is that what we have is a kind of awkwardness worth saving
I stuffed my nose in the grass, Mr. Surgeon General, and it sank down, motionless, and lay for a second on something vaguely round right down there near the path. I wanted to tell you, my body is an inhospitable host for any living thing—even colds.
Of course, every man I know knows much less than I know, which is why they want to know me, but it means they’ll have difficulty performing without feeling foolish, for hours even.
What will become of us? There is a ruthless realism to the way we breathe, the way we sit at a table, the way we fuck, or eat breakfast, or sleep next to each other or next to thousands of strangers. This place has forgotten people living in other towns. We hardly recognize ourselves.
I measure my memories and gestures and meditate on decay
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2025
I'm a little surprised that this book doesn't have more ratings and reviews than it does. SPRAWL is one of the most unique, unassuming, and funny books I've ever read. Dutton's narrator has such a peculiar thought process and way with words, it didn't matter to me that the book is one single, long paragraph, of semi-stream-of-consciousness. EVERY SINGLE PAGE had something that delighted me and made me lol. The accumulation of the details in this book–the mundane, the suburban, the interiority, the lustrous, the restless–all of it is so good and had my brain sparking off observational ideas of my own. At times, the writing reminded me of Diane Williams, or even William S. Burroughs (his wry cut-up phase), but the endurance of the complete arc here is inspiring. I loved it.
January 12, 2023
The majority of me knows I’ll always prefer the book-length prose poem to the regular novel, or even the narrative.
“We justify our mutual hatred by the confinement of this place, it’s houses and corners. It becomes segments of seeing and sensing (seething). I move under bridges and out to the edge. I explore what has already begun to recede. The world beneath my feet is a multiplicity of partial worlds. If I were to try to record an immediate impression of every lasting influence on my life I might find them in the gaps between lying and sentiment. Even the most tedious descriptions of this town might be of value. Even if I were its worst representative.”
“We justify our mutual hatred by the confinement of this place, it’s houses and corners. It becomes segments of seeing and sensing (seething). I move under bridges and out to the edge. I explore what has already begun to recede. The world beneath my feet is a multiplicity of partial worlds. If I were to try to record an immediate impression of every lasting influence on my life I might find them in the gaps between lying and sentiment. Even the most tedious descriptions of this town might be of value. Even if I were its worst representative.”
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November 28, 2024i think i like reading her contained smaller works better - but that is not to say that this isn't incredibly smart & strange. which it is. i love how inside of the narrator's interiority we are, in a way that defamiliarizes literally everything and makes us wonder not just how trustworthy she is, but what the actual logic of this world is & how this world perceives her. i love all the lists of objects, these still lives, that populate her mind & create this sense of some godlike or hidden figure setting them up in ways that have meaning, or don't, or are just deeply representative of materialism in suburbia, in superficiality?
September 29, 2019
One single paragraph spreading across 115 pages paints an odd, delightfully animated still life of suburban domesticity. The unnamed housewife at the centre of this absurd, skewed narrative composes and poses herself in her home and neighbourhood—a self-c0ntained universe that speaks volumes about the glossy magazine inspired attempt to realize the "good life"—and the result is a unique and engaging reading experience. A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2019/09/29/i-...
November 13, 2023
Masterful.
“Most of the time I’m pretty much anywhere. I get my hands on tools or strands, or things that pop into my mind like familiar details. I am visually integrated into my domestic background by color, scent, and shape. In some sense I’m madly in love, or I’m transformed into a kind of habitat, or I match the wallpaper with my eyes. It’s confusing to have to many plausible alternatives” (31).
“Most of the time I’m pretty much anywhere. I get my hands on tools or strands, or things that pop into my mind like familiar details. I am visually integrated into my domestic background by color, scent, and shape. In some sense I’m madly in love, or I’m transformed into a kind of habitat, or I match the wallpaper with my eyes. It’s confusing to have to many plausible alternatives” (31).
April 7, 2018
Samuel Beckett depicted life stripped of its lingerie, window dressing, pretense, etc. - Dutton takes the opposite, metonymic route (ALL accoutrements) to the same dismal destination
Pastoralia-like in its depiction of our capitalist dystopia and yet it's not really experimental, stylistic, but rather a kind of hyper-realism (sadly)
Pastoralia-like in its depiction of our capitalist dystopia and yet it's not really experimental, stylistic, but rather a kind of hyper-realism (sadly)
July 12, 2020
“To celebrate, we offer low-interest loans to the nameless kids who wander the town. I am filled to the brim with my own brand of philanthropy and consider writing a speech. Then I eat cheeses and crackers and watch television and eat strawberry preserves on toast.”
“Still, the women, they weep all the time. I’d shake them, but it’s not as if we’re deserted here. We all agreed to this.”
“Still, the women, they weep all the time. I’d shake them, but it’s not as if we’re deserted here. We all agreed to this.”
January 11, 2024
Best enjoyed with too much caffeine and too little food. I put this in the same category as (Nothing But) Flowers, all Big Thief/Adrianne Lenker’s most gruesome songs about rotting in sex and love, Sophie Calle, the way listening to The Knife makes me feel, grotesque & mundane things. Dissociated and depressed and glorious. My roommate two-weeks into meeting me said this book reminded her of me.
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December 8, 2023SPRAWL appears to be an experiment in writing interiority (and in composing a novella as one long paragraph), which is a project I respect but not one I was in the mood for. Definitely not a book for the casual or for-entertainment reader.
No rating because I didn't finish.
No rating because I didn't finish.
November 23, 2020
A modern housewife’s stream-of-consciousness story. Your mileage may vary here, but I enjoyed it!
February 23, 2021
Interesting concept and voice. Didn't open into any feel of movement.
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