Inside Madeleine

by Paula Bomer

From the author of Nine Months and Baby comes a daring new collection that seethes with alienation, lust and rage. Bomer takes us from hospitals, halfway houses, and alleyways, to boarding schools and Park Avenue penthouses, exploring the complex relationships girls have with their bodies, with other girls, and with boys. The title novella tracks the ins and outs of an outsider’s life: her childhood obesity and kinky sex life, her toxic relationships, whether familial or erotic, and her various disappearing acts, of body and mind.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Feminism, Romance, Contemporary, Dark, Literary Fiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 2013

About the author

I'm the author of the novels Tante Eva and Nine Months (Soho Press), the collection Inside Madeleine (Soho Press), Baby and Other Stories (Word Riot Press), I grew up in South Bend, Indiana and live in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, smutty, and unflinching. Bomer is able to capture some of the slipperiest, most convoluted emotions with dagger-precise turns of phrase. No one writes "bad" girls better.

[Herman Concentrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some bits are really good and gross but all the stories are the same

[Thelma Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paula Bomer's collection of stories and a novella is fierce, funny and filthy. The author of "Baby" and "Nine Months" is not your people-pleasing fiction writer. Her prose is crisp and clear and propulsive but she never pauses to ask: is it pretty? Do you like me? Some of her characters may be doormats seeking and thwarting unconditional love but, as an author, Bomer is brave, often mortifyingly so. Some of these stories are so naked emotionally that they cry out to be covered up with a towel – but Bomer resists, documenting every stretch mark, every gooey sex act, every human hunger. The stories and novella are about adolescents and young women who screw, drink, smoke and suffer toward some sense of identity, and a final nugget of unexpected emotional truth, but they are never blamers. They are fat girls and slim, workers in halfway houses and inmates, college girls tied at the hip to the party keg and Friday night ice skaters slugging back peppermint schnapps, daddy's girls and mommy's enemies. They sometimes echo each other, circling geography in South Bend, Indiana, or Boston, Massachusetts, or the East Village of Manhattan, struggling with anorexia and love-drug addiction. My favorite story is called "Pussies," about a doormat of a young college graduate, all angles and jangly limbs and drunk more often than not. Her relationship with a trust-fund fueled girlfriend goes south when an apartment building catches fire and she rescues the girl's cats but in a desperate survivor's way that alienates the vegan rich girl (but spares the animals). The Madeleine of the title, and main character in the novella that concludes the slim volume, is a Midwestern "Precious," a fat girl whose folds of skin both fascinate her and protect her from a world that continually serves up rejection. These are not dainty stories to be read one at a time. Instead, binge-drink them for the shock value – and stay for the awe.

[Ela]

I just didn't get it....

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really disliked this collection of short stories. Often movies fall flat because the characters face simple problems that are tidily resolved, leaving a state of unrealistic bliss. These short stories suffered from a contradictory problem--everything was so bleak! By no means do I feel that fiction shouldn't be depressing. However, good fiction captures an essence about the complexity of life. "Madame Bovary", which I adore, is not exactly a cheerful read. But the pain of "Madame Bovary" is understandable, and helps us to understand the human conditions of the stifling oppression of mundane provincial life. By contrast, the stories of "Inside Madeline" do not capture this complexity; the protagonists suffer inveterate misery without the necessary characterization to explain why they are miserable. Each story is set in 1986 and focuses on essentially the same unhappy girl from South Bend, Indiana. In one of the stories the girl is living in Boston during a summer between her college years, and she's working at a home for mentally disturbed patients. The girl is troubled by the fact that her mother hates her, while she is close with her father. These relationships affect her ability to interact with others. While these family relationships are interesting, there is an utter absence of characterization to explain why. To make the reader care, or empathize, it's necessary to know more than the unsatisfactory statement that "the mother hates the daughter". The reader doesn't need the causes of the bad relationship explicitly spelled out (that would be artificially pat), but a nuanced suggestion is necessary. My final critique: this short story collection was so similar to "Blueprints for Building Better Girls" by Elissa Schappell, which I read recently, and also disliked.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see the potential in the themes, but it just didn't work for me.

Though the subject/content is interesting, this entire collection lacks grip in its entirety (energy, language, and storytelling). For each story, there is nothing new about the characters either, think of the main characters from The Bell Jar, The Virgin Suicides, etc., spread all over then mixed together, void of their personalities and wittiness.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. One of the most compelling authors out there today, she takes so many chances on the pages, isn't afraid of the taboo or controversial. A fantastic collection of stories.

[Dev · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read where the characters aren't mostly happy with a few problems. No one leads a happy life here. The problems displayed in the stories take over the characters' lives. There are no easy resolutions.

This book is graphic. Graphic drug and alcohol use. Graphic sex. One short story is definitely erotica. The title novella could be defined as pulp fiction, maybe - while sex is not the point of the story, there is a whole lot of it.

I liked it. I liked the fact that there was no sugarcoating. And - as much as I hate to say it, this book made me feel a little bit better about myself. Nothing I've had to deal with in my life has ever come close to the problems these girls have to face.

[Bob Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oof. For the most part, it felt like a collection of stories written by someone trying to piss off their parents, or an adolescent trying to convince everyone that they hate themselves, a collection that uses taboo as a shortcut to edginess. Read it based on the Loren Stein blurb and will henceforward take his blurbs and recommendations w/ a grain of salt.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've loved Paula Bomer for three and a half years and I don't think I'll ever stop. The unholy triumvirate (aka my top three favorite stories): Breasts, Inside Madeleine, and Outsiders.

[Audie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry, I just don't see where the accolades for "Inside Madeleine" are coming from. Just because it's a female writing about sex in a less than Harlequin way doesn't mean what's written is automatically gritty and subversive. To be honest, it was just plain boring.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strength of this collection is how one story bleeds into the next. Each story contains echoes of the previous stories but not in a distracting way. The stories build and build. Bomer has a skill for evoking physical reactions and I found myself holding my breath or cringing at several points in the stories. The women are not always brave or self-respecting but the emotions created are captivating. These are stories about identity and coming of age and being/becoming a woman. "Reading to the Blind Girl" is a perfect example. The protagonist, Maggie, volunteers to read to a blind girl in her class at Boston University but soon discovers she is repulsed by the blind girl. Even though Maggie wants to do the right thing, she is figuring out who she is, what she wants and her sense of duty to this young woman in her class is overwhelmed by her own realistic, selfish desire to stake a claim about who she is. These themes of identity and struggle between who the character thinks she is and who she wants to be are the times when Bomer's writing really shines.

The novella and title story, "Inside Madeleine," at first appears to be the perfect capstone to these themes and at the beginning of the story, Bomer is on a roll. Madeleine's constant struggle to fill herself up is expertly described in scenes and details with her mother's cooking and her mother's anguish over her daughter being obese. Bomer continues this as Madeleine attempts to 'fill herself up' in other ways in scenes that are heart-breaking and unflinching. However, when we get half-way through and Madeleine no longer wants to fill herself up, Bomer switches to telling the story from Madeleine's interior to the neglect of creating great scenes like she had in the first half. I wanted more scenes because the author telling me what was going on with Madeleine was not as interesting as watching it and figuring it out for myself.

This is a great collection even though the end left me wanting. Still, I look forward to reading what Bomer comes up with next.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional book on par with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, only unflinchingly updated for our time. Exploring all the struggles, pleasures, horrors, and disappointments of girls becoming young women becoming old women too soon, Bomer crafts stories so true you wouldn't blink if someone told you they were nonfiction essays by walking talking broken healed astounding and confounding women living in your town. Worth a spot on any bookshelf.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes, pushing the envelope is not what it's cracked up to be and this collection of short stories proves it. There's nothing really experimental here, nothing that really reveals anything "true" about the characters or the situations. Of all the stories, only one really spoke to me (the first) and, sadly, the sex wasn't even exciting.

ARC provided by publisher.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories made me squirm with discomfort. I've felt this way before when I read Kevin Sampsell and Lindsay Hunter. Reading these stories inspired a state of horrified fascination. And I loved it.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

trigger warnings: drug/alcohol, possible incest, dubious consent, anorexia, underage sex, sex itself

Inside Madeleine sets up the thesis (they don't want to see young girls win) in the first story "eye socket girls," then tells some uncomfortable stories of girlhood, and then caps it off with the titular "Inside Madeleine." Maddy's story arcs back on itself - she might've become her mother, had she had a kid. It also arcs back to "eye socket girls," starting from the beginning. Either you're competing with the girls around you (better sucking cock then the others, better than the blind girl), or you're smoking together. Girl, girl, don't you see that fire?

This book doesn't really make sense until the end, so bare with it until then. Bare with it, you might. Overall, the stories had so many similarities - smoking, sex, breasts, they hardly stood on their own, which is what I expected. What the characters go through was far from what I experienced, so some of it just didn't land for me. I think the book was written for the author and, conversely, someone else.

Still, gives a lot to think about.

[elif sinem · Rating 2 out of 5]

dnf @ 67%

Mainly I feel like this book had nothing to say on a fundamental level. As a result, every character, every setting, every story is a permutation of the other; after the first one, things quickly wear off and we're left with eminently unpleasant characters (but by no means *difficult*, as they are all one-dimensional), and a prose that has no flourish whatsoever.

This wouldn't be a problem to me if there wasn't "two years", a short story following a 29 year old man having sex with a girl ten years younger complete with extreme detail about sex and nothing but contempt for the female character (yes, that's the story) and then right after follows "inside madeleine" in which the opening section details Madeleine's love for food in such a manner that you once again just feel the utter contempt. Then when **NSFW** madeleine got all sorts of infections because she inserted everything into her vagina including a rubber duck **NSFW** happened, i skimmed through, made sure its just a permutation of all the other stories, and I just deleted the book off my kindle.

[Melanie Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m starting with a brief note that while we aren’t close friends, I do know Paula Bomer through my time networking as a creative writing student and book reviewer. And, because I live in South Bend, Indiana, which is where she grew up, we have met up to share some delicious Chinese food.

Because I care about Paula Bomer and am totally biased, I’m letting you know so that I follow the ethical practices of reviewing. Moving forward!

Inside Madeleine is a collection of short stories and one novella. The stories seem to be about the same girl on the cusp of womanhood, though she always has a different name: she’s from South Bend, wears a leather jacket, doesn’t have much money, befriends a wealthy person who thinks she’s tacky, moves to Boston, and has a penchant for receiving oral sex. It’s hard not to wonder why these similar characters weren’t meshed into one and written into a second novella. I’ve read books that contain two novellas, and I love it. In fact, I think the novella is the most underrated genre.

When compared to the Bomer’s novella, the titular Inside Madeleine, I felt the short stories couldn’t compare. The longer the work, the more Bomer seemed in her element. I cared so hard for Madeleine, understood and couldn’t comprehend her, rooted for her and knew failure was just around the corner. Her body is the true main character, though Madeleine is the delusional yet deliberate conductor of it. She’s the fat girl, the joyful slut, the anorexic, the wife, nobody’s girlfriend, somebody’s somebody.

There were moments in the novella that circled back to some of the short stories. For example, the first short story, “Eye Socket Girls,” is about a young woman in a facility for those suffering from anorexia. “We envy the protruding bones of someone who is that much closer to not being here at all,” the narrator laments. The narrator, who is on the mend, befriends a girl who is near death. In the novella, Madeleine finds herself in the same position.

I don’t want to make the assumption that the author feels a personal connection to the type of girl she writes and rewrites in this collection, but I have come across a number of authors and artists who obsess (and I don’t meant that negatively) over the same experiences or character traits or emotions. Lidia Yuknavitch comes to mind. Picasso’s “the blue period,” too. Irvine Welsh’s drug addicts. Jhumpa Lahiri’s immigrant families from Calcutta. To me, it starts to feel like the creator needs to work the process out of his/her system and then share the final product. However, I can also easily see how other readers would cherish being part of an artist’s journey. Just depends on what kind of reader you are.

Likely, because I spent so many years reading one story collection after another, I’ve grown fussy about them, thinking harder than necessary about the order of the stories, themes, how stories link and tie in together. I was trained to do this in two different creative writing programs. A reader with a different background likely has not. For example, Kellan @ 29Chapters loved Inside Madeleine, and I agree with her reasoning. Bomer’s stories feel like someone’s taken a vegetable peeler to your skin. I’ve never been so aware of my body as a thing as when I’m reading Bomer’s work. That’s both uncomfortable and fascinating. I was completely transfixed by her first short story collection, Baby, and taught the titular story repeatedly and an all-women’s college — much to the horror of my students (HA-HA).

Originally reviewed at Grab the Lapels.

[Roseyreverie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t enjoy this book...it’s something I started falling into and had to finish simply because I wanted it to end. I kept hoping the end point would bring some sort of resolution, something that would tie up all the fragments of each story...even if it was in a sad way, but it never came. I didn’t get it. I don’t get this book. I was trying to scour my memory of each story to find a hidden thread of connection, something that links them all together...a secret, brilliantly hidden underlying theme. But I couldn’t. I can’t give this book 1 star because it DID hold my attention, but it held my attention in a sick way and I would never read it again...so ultimately...I think it deserves 1.5. There is a way to write raw, real, dark, even hopeless stories in a way that is still appealing, but the author doesn’t do this for me. It all seemed so utterly distasteful, and for what reason? What was the point? Just to throw out into the world a collection of nasty, dirty, uncomfortable, tasteless rambling? I suppose that was the authors intent, but I don’t get it. Where was the deeper meaning? I don’t see the point of writing something so nastily obscene and violent if there is no deeper meaning. This book seems like something someone should scribble into a diary as a way of venting about their distaste of men and the world around them- not something that should have made it’s way into a published work.

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty fair to say that I was blown away by this collection of short stories. I was expecting them to be edgy and laced with sex and mischievous behavior, but they were also well-written and emotionally complex. There was something I liked about each one of them and I loved most of them. I wasn't expecting the format they would take; they are not all similar or formulaic, but each story sets up for maybe something good to happen, but nope, things don't end up so well. Not to say that the writing itself is a let down, but the events of the stories often take a depressing turn.
The collection's titular story is really a novella and that was perhaps my favorite of the book. It was so fascinating to see Madeleine's remarkable transformation and as you progress through her life, you become a bit more unsettled. From a severely overweight child to a outsider to a "slut" to a neurotic anorexic housewife, I was definitely intrigued the whole way.
Who wants fluffy fiction when we have stuff like this with actual intellectual merit?

[Emily Turner-hagman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was simply dark, raw and unfiltered. Paula Bomer created characters that were flawed through and through and took them on a journey that I did not want to end. I would love a part two to this collection of short stories to revisit these young women after they have become full adults.

I could not get enough of each one these characters. Even the side characters were just as flawed and perfectly crafted. I could connect to most of the characters and what they were going through, being that I am in the same age range that the characters are. At some points in the book, I had some deja vu because I have lived through those moments myself. I have never read something that was so bold and honest. It is so rare for people to really dig down deep and express how and what they are feeling. This collection of short stories felt like a breath of fresh air. Finally, someone gets it. Someone isn't afraid to tell you the truth.

I was completely blown away by Bomer's talent to create a story that was as real as real life. I can not wait to read more by this diamond of an author!

[Alisha Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of stories was engaging, horrifying, and unflinchingly grotesque. The girls who we read about are desperate. Their lives are not pretty, and the author does not try to hide that fact--she does the exact opposite and shoves it directly into the reader's face. Most of the characters are not very likable, but the emotional trauma that each is dealing with is relatable. Even if you have nothing in common with these girls they seem like people you could have crossed paths with in everyday life. They are each heartbreakingly real in some way.

I really enjoyed how honest and unfiltered the writing was. It was interesting reading something so vulgar and yet so engaging. Some of the stories pissed me off. Some made me sad. Some left me wondering what it was that I was feeling. Each story was full of emotion although that emotion was usually negative in some way. I liked some stories more than others, but each story made me feel something, and for me, that is a sign of good writing.

[Zahara Keulen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring and trite.
The author just puts out this same sad character, as if to say "Look how messed up this poor poor girl is. Look how sad her life is. Look how out of control she's gotten."

Every story is the same: Young country girl trying struggling to fit in, whether it be with a girl she idolises or a man she wants or just a group of people she wants to be a part of. She always has low self esteem, and in turn is frequently callus toward other characters. She is almost always abused, usually by the people she's trying to fit in with. She frequently falls in with a stereotypically bad crowd of shallow people who use various drugs. She fails to fit in and her life just gets worse. There's a lot of sex, but it's sad sex. Sex is something she does to satisfy someone else, or to rebel, or a compulsion stemming from some other trauma.

The characters lack dimension, and the stories don't really go anywhere. It's just a cheap, sad girl freak show for the reader to gawk at.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paula Bomer's writing is reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk in that she writes about character's that you shouldn't like... and really don't like, but that are so engaging that you want to continue reading anyways. Her prose is graphic, grotesque and also a bit lovely. The stories in this book are filled with hopelessness, desperation and isolation. They revolve around weak women and bad women who think they are strong and how they feel about their bodies, other women, men, sex, food and life in general.

Definitely an interesting look into body image and female relationships with both themselves and others. A dark look, but an interesting one.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

So-called "edgy" or "transgressive" fiction has sometimes left me cold, their authors merely relying on the frankness of their language, but Bomer's collection here is really impressive. Nine pieces, verging on repetitive, that form a story cycle about damaged, confused, unhealthy women and the men who (don't) love them. Standouts for me: "Reading to the Blind Girl," "Cleveland Circle House," and "Pussies," while the title novella might be my favorite piece of fiction so far this year. Definitely worth checking out.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and feministy short stories. However I do have to say that two months after finishing this, I really don't remember a lot about the stories themselves. However, I do remember that I really enjoyed them!

[Lauren]

I don't even know how to rate this.

[KayG · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little icky for me.

[kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh snap...five stars.

I did the audiobook for this and for the first time since I've started consuming books this way, I found myself listening intently to every. single. word. that was read: staying in my driveway with the AC running, leaving my headphones on longer in the evenings, you get the idea. This collection of stories is highly engaging, smutty, and just plain grotesque. And I loved it.

Each story deals with female characters and the complicated relationship they have with their bodies and the people around them. All of the characters are young, all of them desperate, and all (if I'm not mistaken) are from South Bend, Indiana. "Eye Socket Girls" is about an anorexic girl's stint in a hospital, "Down the Alley," is the tale of a teenage girl's self-discovery and rebellion, and the novella-length title story, "Inside Madeleine," is a tour de force about the complex relationship between a teenage girl and her body.

I loved the way that these stories seemingly hide...well, nothing. None of these characters are particularly likeable, but they weren't supposed to be. Even the sex scenes were raunchy and vulgar, but they clearly weren't meant to titillate the audience. All of the characters in each story came across as relatable and achingly real and I had no choice but to feel them.

Did I tell you I loved this book?

Must read.

[Raven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotes that really resonated:

"The lights in the tall buildings everywhere were pinpricks, little holes in the world, the holes of a safety net all around us. A time in my life was over and it had ended pretty badly. And yet, what a beautiful thing, to be young, to not yet even have discovered my own body (which hours under a bathtub spout eventually changed), to be at the mercy of others, to have so much ahead of myself, and to so easily disappoint another person." (!!!)

"As they move, dust rises in the streams of light, surrounding their glowing bodies. It was noon, maybe 2 p.m. They'd been having sex all morning." (!)

I liked it. It was just *edgy* in a way that didn't jive with me. All the girls in this book can be described in the same way:
*obsessed with men
*obsessed with men who give them orgasms
*obsessed with men who give them nothing and demand everything
*has a "best friend" who maybe actually hates them
*is falling apart, but still has youth and libido!

(also the Alicia Camp character (???). I get the exploration of race and class, but yikes).