Introduction

Using a spare, image-laden prose style, Germanacos’ focuses on discrete, telling moments to create fast-paced stories that pack a powerful punch. This is not your standard short story collection – it is an innovative work of literary prose as brilliant, concise, and potent as a bolt of lightning.

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Excerpt

Death of the Time

I’m not sure what I think or know anymore, now, in the days of the departed girls. You could even call it the death of the time of the girls.

These girls are still too real. If I don’t forget about them and let them flow out to sea, the tide will never bring them back.

Flies, Dead Kitten

A month after their departure, flies swarm. The peacock’s moan is obnoxious and insistent.

Walking, I passed a dead kitten. The placenta was there, flies hovered. When I went back later, the kitten was gone.

But where?

The mother came and pulled it away, even though it was already dead? A hawk flew down and swooped it up?

(Things come and go.)

The Girls:

Hera’s sudden pains. Her angers and hilarities, her fluctuations. Her very long blond-streaked hair. The eyes that, once almost too clear, are now opaque. Her crazy mother, the only (other) family she has.

Artemis’ elaborate dreams, her money, her jewelry, her clothes (blue sunglasses), her drawings that are more doodle than anything recognizable. Her family like a piece of complicated architecture.

Demeter’s hair in ponytails, her funny teeth. Her mature beauty when she smiles. The mother she loves to hate. Her boa, rat, pygmy goats.

Athena’s rage to make words say things she doesn’t yet know. Her lack of experience. Her weenie of a father. The mother she says is like a father.

The junk food Hera buys for them.

Artemis’ soy milk.

Demeter’s vegetarianism. (Her mother’s lesbianism.)

Athena’s worry that she’ll become like her Italian grandmother whose bra has made grooves in her shoulders from being weighed down with breasts. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1) How could “Adam and Eva” be seen as a riff on the Biblical story of Adam and Eve? Does it desecrate the original story? Does it add anything to it? If so, how?
2) Describe the style of “Until We Go to Sleep” and think about how it may add to our understanding of the content. Could you say that the
3) Is Mary (in the story with the same title) self-destructive? What is she looking for? What does she find? What do you think is being said about appetite in human beings, including that for the sacred?
4) In “Caffeine”, the narrator seems to be talking about at least two different kinds of pain. Can you describe them? Is one kind of pain worse than the other? What is the style of the piece and how is it linked to the content?
5) In “Anthropology”, the main character returns to a physical place as well as a psychological moment in her life. Aside from the things she actually does, she seems to be having a conversation with herself. What is she saying to herself and the world about her life? What sacrifices has she made? What has she gained?
6) What is your understanding of the title, “Being Black”? What point is the narrator making about herself and the society she lives in?
7) In “Killing the Husband”, is a real murder enacted? Comment on the tone of the story and how it clues you in to sense of that phrase.
8) In “Being Conquered”, how many different kinds of conquering occur? How does the physical and historical setting add to the development of the characters?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Anne Germanacos' web site

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