The Brutal Language of Love

by Alicia Erian (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $4.40

  From its startling opening sentences, THE BRUTAL LANGUAGE OF LOVE has the reader hooked: raw, frank and often desperately funny, the stories in this collection set out to redraw the map of the human heart. We meet a young teenager who spends her afternoons taking baths with the school bully, a woman in her thirties who is convinced by a bra shopping trip that she is a lesbian, and an American college girl who marries an Egyptian man to prove to herself that she is not racist. Erian's heroines are often outsiders, but what unites them is their defiance - though their choices may lead them to suffer, there is an overwhelming sense that they may prefer this than to have missed the experiences that have made them who they are.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $7.58

  Alicia Erian's deliciously grown-up debut may not be a book for nice girls, but it has a lot to teach us about the unruly nature of desire. A college-bound student plots to lose her virginity to a pizza waiter, a spelling champion spends her afternoons in the bath with the classroom bully and a newlywed finds herself strangely drawn to her husband's father. Bold, achingly funny and never less than heartfelt, these are stories about women who dare to grasp at experience in the knowledge that they may live to regret it. The Brutal Language of Love announces the arrival of a true and highly original voice in American fiction.