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Tongue Party
Tongue Party is a collection of short stories by Sarah Rose Etter.
It was selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Competition and is currently available from Caketrain Press.
It was selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Competition and is currently available from Caketrain Press.
90 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2011
1854 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Rose Etter
13 books1,366 followersSarah Rose Etter is the author of Tongue Party, and The Book of X, winner of a Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel. Her second novel, RIPE, is forthcoming from Scribner in July 2023.
Her work has appeared in Time, Guernica, BOMB, The Bennington Review, The Cut, VICE, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residences at the Jack Kerouac House, the Disquiet International program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan Writing Residency in Iceland.
She earned her BA in English from Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in fiction from Rosemont College. She lives in Los Angeles. For more info, visit SarahRoseEtter.com.
Her work has appeared in Time, Guernica, BOMB, The Bennington Review, The Cut, VICE, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residences at the Jack Kerouac House, the Disquiet International program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan Writing Residency in Iceland.
She earned her BA in English from Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in fiction from Rosemont College. She lives in Los Angeles. For more info, visit SarahRoseEtter.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
July 6, 2021
April 2012
Lesson learned: Just because you can read an 80(ish)-page story collection in one sitting, one hour, one evening, doesn't mean you should. I'm going to have to think about (and reread) this one...
The "Koala Tide" isn't quite as adorable as it sounds. "Cake" should be enjoyed in moderation, while "Tongue Party" may not be enjoyable at all. "Men Under Glass" didn't get there by accident. "Chicken Father" is very sad, and "Husband Feeder" is running out of options. You may need to think about "Cures" and "Womb Peck." Eight powerful, poignant, and somewhat scary stories in a petite paperback that packs a punch, what's not to love?
Just as I started looking around for small and independent publishers, along came Caketrain Press. All aboard! Admittedly, I've been slipping and calling them Caketown, no thanks to that trailer for the PG edition of 300, but I'll get over it. They're a bold little literary journal and publisher, if Tongue Party and their other books, available in nice little packages at irresistable prices, are any indication. I got this one bundled with four others, and my only regret is that I snapped them up before the very bizarre Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake became available. Don't make the same mistake I did. Grab 'em all! Resistance is futile!
...I'm really turning into a pusher for independent presses, aren't I? 'Ey, 'ey you, wanna try a publisher? Cor, look at these covers, ain't they a beaut?
More Caketrain titles:
The Weather Stations
Ghost Machine
Cure All
Short Dark Oracles
Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake
Caketrain Press home page
Lesson learned: Just because you can read an 80(ish)-page story collection in one sitting, one hour, one evening, doesn't mean you should. I'm going to have to think about (and reread) this one...
The "Koala Tide" isn't quite as adorable as it sounds. "Cake" should be enjoyed in moderation, while "Tongue Party" may not be enjoyable at all. "Men Under Glass" didn't get there by accident. "Chicken Father" is very sad, and "Husband Feeder" is running out of options. You may need to think about "Cures" and "Womb Peck." Eight powerful, poignant, and somewhat scary stories in a petite paperback that packs a punch, what's not to love?
Just as I started looking around for small and independent publishers, along came Caketrain Press. All aboard! Admittedly, I've been slipping and calling them Caketown, no thanks to that trailer for the PG edition of 300, but I'll get over it. They're a bold little literary journal and publisher, if Tongue Party and their other books, available in nice little packages at irresistable prices, are any indication. I got this one bundled with four others, and my only regret is that I snapped them up before the very bizarre Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake became available. Don't make the same mistake I did. Grab 'em all! Resistance is futile!
...I'm really turning into a pusher for independent presses, aren't I? 'Ey, 'ey you, wanna try a publisher? Cor, look at these covers, ain't they a beaut?
More Caketrain titles:
The Weather Stations
Ghost Machine
Cure All
Short Dark Oracles
Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake
Caketrain Press home page
January 7, 2014
The end of (or rather, the destruction of) innocence.
A father that pimps his daughter at an all out Tongue Party.
Categorization of unnamable things, atrocities, niceities in nameless cities.
Dancing loving stinging jellyfish.
A husband's insatiable hunger. Devour the world.
The only reason this collection isn't five stars is because I've held that last star back in its cradle in hope that it will spawn another collection by Sarah Rose Etter. Because that's where these stories originated: the cold and naked shingled remains from the day of melancholic Creation.
A father that pimps his daughter at an all out Tongue Party.
Categorization of unnamable things, atrocities, niceities in nameless cities.
Dancing loving stinging jellyfish.
A husband's insatiable hunger. Devour the world.
The only reason this collection isn't five stars is because I've held that last star back in its cradle in hope that it will spawn another collection by Sarah Rose Etter. Because that's where these stories originated: the cold and naked shingled remains from the day of melancholic Creation.
May 4, 2011
an amazing collection of insanely imaginative, terrifying, and funny tales. here's the blurb i wrote for it:
“There are stories that show you the way things are, and ones that show you the way things might be, and then there are stories that tear you apart and build different things from the pieces. You might be happy with some of them, but I assure you, you won’t like them all. Sarah Rose Etter isn’t a writer; she’s a witch, and this is a house and storm of spells.”
“There are stories that show you the way things are, and ones that show you the way things might be, and then there are stories that tear you apart and build different things from the pieces. You might be happy with some of them, but I assure you, you won’t like them all. Sarah Rose Etter isn’t a writer; she’s a witch, and this is a house and storm of spells.”
June 25, 2011
One of the freshest, most original and engaging books I've read this year. Sarah Rose Etter's imagination is a daring, disturbing place and in these stories she invites us into the world as she sees it. I don't ever want to leave and can't wait to see what she does next.
June 20, 2011
I recently had the pleasure and privilege of hearing Sarah Rose Etter read the title story from this collection, and now that I've read the book that story feels like the pivot point of the set. "Tongue Party" forces us, through an incredible turnabout midway through, to wonder about the implications of telling a story straight versus telling it through filters of metaphor and fantasy and suggestion, and to ask which story is "real." I don't want to spoil that powerful turn by explaining it here, but as perhaps the most literal, entirely realistic moment of the book it became a lens through which I read the rest, always aware both of the strange surface (eg, a father wearing a chicken mask to cover his grief, kidnapped dates locked in glass rooms, or a tide of washed up koalas) and of wondering what "real" experience such strangeness distorts or obscures. That made for exciting, provocative tensions between reader, writer, and text.
The strongest of these stories suggest a larger world their characters inhabit, rather than a discrete, contained storyworld. "Chicken Father," for one, complicates grief both within a family and socially at once, and "Husband Feeder" takes what in plain description might sound like too literal an image of consumption to take on the richness it eventually does through complications of gender, wealth, and culture. If anything, I would have liked to see that aspect of the collection pushed further, because a few moments felt like doors opened but not quite stepped through. Not because the stories lack anything as they are—far from it—but turning questions asked of the domestic onto other spheres, too, might have added another dimension.
"Koala Tide," for instance (and fair warning, bit of a spoiler), uses dead koalas washing ashore as the jarring, monkey's paw-esque fulfillment of childhood desires. It's a terrific story, building up then subverting readerly assumptions and expectations several times in its course. The koalas seem arbitrary as an animal, chosen perhaps for their cuteness or for the sound of their name, but koalas are also real, and endangered, and geographically specific, so a story about heaps of them dead on an ambiguous shoreline has implications beyond the aesthetic. Not that the story should be "about" endangered species or koala ecology or anything so didactic, but perhaps questions raised elsewhere in the collection about the realistic and the fantastic could have been engaged to ask not just how we use metaphor to make sense of experience but also where our particular metaphors come from and why our choice of them matters in a reader's world as much as a character's (particularly, perhaps, a reader who tends toward ecocritical reading and is a little obsessive about animals as metaphor. Ahem.)
The strongest of these stories suggest a larger world their characters inhabit, rather than a discrete, contained storyworld. "Chicken Father," for one, complicates grief both within a family and socially at once, and "Husband Feeder" takes what in plain description might sound like too literal an image of consumption to take on the richness it eventually does through complications of gender, wealth, and culture. If anything, I would have liked to see that aspect of the collection pushed further, because a few moments felt like doors opened but not quite stepped through. Not because the stories lack anything as they are—far from it—but turning questions asked of the domestic onto other spheres, too, might have added another dimension.
"Koala Tide," for instance (and fair warning, bit of a spoiler), uses dead koalas washing ashore as the jarring, monkey's paw-esque fulfillment of childhood desires. It's a terrific story, building up then subverting readerly assumptions and expectations several times in its course. The koalas seem arbitrary as an animal, chosen perhaps for their cuteness or for the sound of their name, but koalas are also real, and endangered, and geographically specific, so a story about heaps of them dead on an ambiguous shoreline has implications beyond the aesthetic. Not that the story should be "about" endangered species or koala ecology or anything so didactic, but perhaps questions raised elsewhere in the collection about the realistic and the fantastic could have been engaged to ask not just how we use metaphor to make sense of experience but also where our particular metaphors come from and why our choice of them matters in a reader's world as much as a character's (particularly, perhaps, a reader who tends toward ecocritical reading and is a little obsessive about animals as metaphor. Ahem.)
July 27, 2011
You could call these stories disturbing, bizarre, and surreal. You could also call these stories imaginative or creative and fresh. One thing you cannot call these stories is dull. I read the book in a single sitting and will likely do so again in the near future.
There is a certain darkness lying in some of these stories, a darkness I don't see too often in the things I've been reading. It's as if any of the stories could turn on you, the reader, at any moment.
There is a certain darkness lying in some of these stories, a darkness I don't see too often in the things I've been reading. It's as if any of the stories could turn on you, the reader, at any moment.
Read
June 7, 2011Sarah Rose Etter is in control of every word and she commands them do wicked/wonderful things to you and you think maybe you want it to stop because it hurts but you cannot stop reading and then it does stop and you wish it had not.
June 6, 2011
Imagery and emotion that makes your soul shiver, your brain ask uncomfortable questions, and your heart swell with both hope and dread.
August 4, 2011
Tongue Party is quite a unique little things, a short book with short stories, but these stories are ridiculously good. The thought behind these stories, the creativity and the abruptness, impact like a hammer. Sometimes they hit your thumb, sometimes they hit your face. Either way, each story hurts.
I read this collection outloud to a speical person, and after I finished "Cake" and promised her that I would never shadow the actions of the man in the story, I knew that there was no limit to how many times I could read this collection to her. She enjoyed it as much that I have been searching since for another collection that might compare to this one. Unfortunately, this task has been unsuccessful. Mostly do to the fact that there is no one that thinks like Ms. Etter, no one that writes like her, no one that can create dreams like her. For this is true success.
I read this collection outloud to a speical person, and after I finished "Cake" and promised her that I would never shadow the actions of the man in the story, I knew that there was no limit to how many times I could read this collection to her. She enjoyed it as much that I have been searching since for another collection that might compare to this one. Unfortunately, this task has been unsuccessful. Mostly do to the fact that there is no one that thinks like Ms. Etter, no one that writes like her, no one that can create dreams like her. For this is true success.
September 29, 2012
I need a root canal and I am having a flu shot hangover and I am (expletive) pregnant, which means I'm sneezing nonstop and I'm waddling from this weird uncomfortable ligament thing that shoots up the back of my thigh into my gluteus Maximus, the volume of which my condition has maximized, and I have a pressure and tension headache which makes any task involving my eyeballs a mite annoying. And yet... Tongue Party hit the (expletive) spot. Its short stories overflow with life, colorful and weird and oozing with personality and somehow literal and metaphorical at the same time.
Sarah Rose Etter? This bitch be crazy. Crazy good fun without being trite that is. Loved Gown Rain that was in BWR a few months ago too and cannot wait to read whatever might stream forth from her whirling writer-hands next.
Sarah Rose Etter? This bitch be crazy. Crazy good fun without being trite that is. Loved Gown Rain that was in BWR a few months ago too and cannot wait to read whatever might stream forth from her whirling writer-hands next.
June 3, 2011
A lot goes on in this little book. Sarah Rose is a slight of hand artist. She shows you absurdity: waves images of tides of koalas, fathers with chicken masks, parties of tongues, unsatiable husbands and men behind glass but then she brandishes a flourish---sparkles, explosions, lightning---and suddenly you are hit with the emotion she weaves deeply into each story. The best bait and switch ever!
I loved this book. I loved being moved on a gut-level through almost every story. She makes beautiful prose. Great job, Sarah Rose.
I loved this book. I loved being moved on a gut-level through almost every story. She makes beautiful prose. Great job, Sarah Rose.
March 18, 2012
beautiful scary stories about hunger and how to satiate it. turns out you can't. stories from 'her' perspective about dads, husbands, lovers devouring or being devoured, but still you end up a bit peckish. where does that appetite come from? your senses receive and send the salty, savory, sweet, the sour, but something else sends the signal for MORE, or less, just to make it stop. what is it that won;t let you stop? these stories are about that something else.
August 17, 2011
I enjoyed this intriguing and eclectic little book. "Cake" is disturbing and brilliant. I found "Chicken Father" equally mesmerizing. "Husband Feeder" is horrific in a truly skillful way and is deeply affecting. I look forward to future works from Sarah Rose Etter
Want to read
May 7, 2011recommended by the ever-attentive Tuck, and endorsed by Deb Olin Unferth. Sign me up!
July 24, 2011
Fantastic writing, fresh, bold, imaginative stories. I loved this collection!
August 11, 2011
My reading of this went way too fast. I wish there more husband feeders, chicken fathers, koala tides and tongue parties. Such a great collection. I feel like ripping my heart from my chest.
April 8, 2012
If what you are putting into your brain does not at some point make you feel very uncomfortable and disturbed, well then, the writer isn't doing his or her job. Sarah Rose is doing her job.
January 19, 2014
Sarah Rose Etter is immensely talented, managing to pull off the difficult pairing of the insanely bizarre with the emotionally true. One of the best writers out there.
Read
September 26, 2011When I first received Sarah Rose Etter’s
Tongue Party
in the mail, I knew nothing about it other than it had won the 2010 Caketrain chapbook competition. In hindsight, I’m extremely glad I knew nothing about this collection, because watching each beautiful, terrifying, utterly bizarre story unfold is part of what makes reading this cohesive collection so enjoyable.
Reading each story is a delightful trip down the rabbit hole. Many of the female protagonists live in worlds ruled by the dizzying logic of nightmares, struggling against situations beyond their control. In the title story, the protagonist must attend the tongue party, because, well, she must. While later we learn more about the relationship between the narrator and her father (one of several characters who abuses a position of authority and trust), the narrator never stands up and says, “No, I will not attend the tongue party.” The tongue party is as central to her reality as going to the DMV is in ours, and through it, we are able to experience the rawness of her fear and her desire for love. In fact, at no point does any character question the reality they find themselves in; like dreams, we don’t realize something is amiss while the dream is happening. And because Etter builds each world with such detailed, logical precision, we as readers don’t question what is happening either...Read the rest at the site
Reading each story is a delightful trip down the rabbit hole. Many of the female protagonists live in worlds ruled by the dizzying logic of nightmares, struggling against situations beyond their control. In the title story, the protagonist must attend the tongue party, because, well, she must. While later we learn more about the relationship between the narrator and her father (one of several characters who abuses a position of authority and trust), the narrator never stands up and says, “No, I will not attend the tongue party.” The tongue party is as central to her reality as going to the DMV is in ours, and through it, we are able to experience the rawness of her fear and her desire for love. In fact, at no point does any character question the reality they find themselves in; like dreams, we don’t realize something is amiss while the dream is happening. And because Etter builds each world with such detailed, logical precision, we as readers don’t question what is happening either...Read the rest at the site
July 23, 2011
Sarah Rose Etter writes with such power, her voice so sharp and original, she scares me and thrills me at the same time and I enjoy it all. On first reading I felt myself attacking the words, eager and impatient to learn the characters' fate, and then I had to go back and read each story a second time to appreciate her prose, the choices she made, what was included and what she omitted, what she left readers to determine for ourselves.
I loved all eight stories, but particularly Koala Tide, Tongue Party (I'd already read this one on Pank), Men Under Glass, and Husband Feeder: Koala Tide for the anticipation and conflict over the title event, Tongue Party with its examination of a father/daughter relationship and the self-sacrifice and pain we'll endure for family, Men Under Glass for the comic sickness of the torturer's game and how I couldn't stop thinking that someone could really do these things to the hopeful womanizer, and Husband Feeder for all the women in the world who sacrifice everything for their men.
Thank you, Sarah Rose Etter.
I loved all eight stories, but particularly Koala Tide, Tongue Party (I'd already read this one on Pank), Men Under Glass, and Husband Feeder: Koala Tide for the anticipation and conflict over the title event, Tongue Party with its examination of a father/daughter relationship and the self-sacrifice and pain we'll endure for family, Men Under Glass for the comic sickness of the torturer's game and how I couldn't stop thinking that someone could really do these things to the hopeful womanizer, and Husband Feeder for all the women in the world who sacrifice everything for their men.
Thank you, Sarah Rose Etter.
July 3, 2012
Thankfully I couldn't find this one at the library, so now I own it. Imagination and meaning seem to crawl over each other on the pages. They mingle, mutter, and blur; then crystallize as hard pockets in soft places. Etter's storytelling is equally readable and genius.
After reading the last short story 'Husband Feeder' I turned back to 'Koala Tide' and read the book again. This is the first time I've read a book using a shampooing method.
After reading the last short story 'Husband Feeder' I turned back to 'Koala Tide' and read the book again. This is the first time I've read a book using a shampooing method.
September 27, 2012
I read this book really quickly because I didn't realize it would end so soon and then there wouldn't be any more great/creepy/strange but truth-y stories for me to read and I would be sad. LUCKILY, there are links to more stories by the wonderful Sarah Rose Etter on her website to hold me over until she puts out another great collection.
October 28, 2013
Absurd and terrifying. "Koala Tide" really nails that feeling of what it's like to be childishly, irrationally scared. But as crazy as some of the stories get, they never become too in love with themselves—there's never that wink/nudge, or self-aware cleverness. All the stories feel grounded.
I had a bunch of weird nightmares while reading this book.
I had a bunch of weird nightmares while reading this book.
November 16, 2014
Interestingly Devastating... However the abstract style works as a double edged sword... It does wonders for some stories while kills the effect of some... Having said that, this book shouldn't be missed out on, specially for the way these stories have been engineered to leap at you and hold you down...
Tongue Party is a little book that leaves you breathless...
Tongue Party is a little book that leaves you breathless...
April 13, 2012
A promising collection of stories from the wonderful Caketrain. Some moments it startles (the opening, Koala Tide and the title story, Tongue Party) and sometimes it doesn't quite work (Chicken Father).
February 11, 2013
This book is quite the interesting little read. It's fast paced and difficult to put down. While one or two of the stories are a little predictable, most completely surprise you at the end. My only complaint is that there is not enough stories... I want more.
November 24, 2015
For nothing else in the collection, "Chicken Father" is one of the most beautiful & heart-crushing things I've read this year. (By all means, the rest of the collection is fantastic. That one just got to me, and did it with such care and such elegant prose.)
April 9, 2015
Review here.
February 18, 2012
There is a fragile tangibility to this collection and I simply don't have the skill to express quite how profound that makes it.
June 21, 2012
Intense, sharp, focused slaps to consciousness all throughout. I read it through three times just to savor the taste.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews