Creature

by Amina Cain

Amina Cain’s Creature brings together short fictions set in the space between action and reflection, edging at times toward the quiet and contemplative, at other times toward the grotesque or unsettling. Like the women in Jane Bowles’s work, Cain’s narrators seem always slightly displaced in the midst of their own experiences, carefully observing the effects of themselves on their surroundings and of their surroundings on themselves. Other literary precursors might include Raymond Carver and John Cage, some unlikely concoction of the two, with Carver’s lucid prose and instinct for the potency of small gestures and Cage’s ability to return the modern world to elementary principles. These stories offer not just a unique voice but a unique narrative space, a distinct and dramatic rendering of being-in-the-world.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Poetry, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection, Female Authors

90 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 25, 2013

About the author

Amina Memory Cain is the author of the novel Indelicacy, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and staff pick at the Paris Review, published in February 2020 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and two collections of short fiction, Creature, out with Dorothy, a publishing project, and I Go To Some Hollow, with Les Figues Press. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review Daily, n+1, BOMB, Full Stop, the Believer Logger, and other places.

She has also co-curated literary events, such as When Does It or You Begin?, a month long festival of writing, performance, and video at Links Hall in Chicago, Both Sides and The Center, a summer festival of readings and performances enacting various levels of proximity, intimacy, and distance at the MAK Center/Schindler House in West Hollywood, and the Errata Salon, a talk/lecture series at Betalevel in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.

She lives in Los Angeles and is a literature contributing editor at BOMB. You can sometimes find her online on Twitter (@aminamemory) & Instagram (@amina_memory).

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this - it has that dream-like, alone-time interior-ness, which I think I am always looking for in my reading. There were two maybe three pieces which I liked less, the last two, both of which had more of a set theme quality and one about Mary - I'm guessing she was a slave, from her experiences and it is set out in a play-type format with "Int" for Introduction or Interior and then "Ext" which I thought maybe exeunt and then decided must be Exterior - but I don't mind this vagueness, guess-type work that is needed - or not, depending on the reader.

Here are a few of my favourite bits - this is from - The Beak of a Bird:

After that conversation, I think we both needed a break from each other. I spent a whole day reading a book in my kitchen. I knew I would never be able to talk to anyone about it. I washed the dishes. While I was doing that, I finished the conversation in my mind that I had had with Clarice.
"What were you doing there on the farm?" she asked me.
"I had gone there because of the ocean. Also, I am an only child."
"What does being an only child have to do with it?"
"You find you must do what you want."
"Do you? I don't know very much about only children."
"We're very aware of everything. And also sometimes afraid."
I made myself stop the conversation. I sat down at the table and started reading again so that the words I read would fill my mind.

I always find this introspective style of writing very beautiful and moving. I also feel that it speaks a truth about experiences we all have, but rarely share in any form - whether with friends, or lovers, in conversations, or in fact in writing.

The next extract is from - The Beating of My Heart - and follows the one about Mary - and is I think connected. But, this narrative has an historical setting focussing on a woman, who is without home or food - and as you will see suddenly flicks to a modern point of view, of someone playing a part. I felt as if all the pieces were connected to each other, but I also liked the dissociation and the vague associations.

He is the only one in his family who has seen this place and its creatures. From the light of his lantern he crosses the land that rises in front of him. In a small town someone gives him a gold watch he would like to refuse, but he takes it. Now he has two things to hold. I'm hungry because I haven't eaten in weeks. Something inside me is doubling over. I'm all alone now, but this is the way I wanted it.
Time opens up and something is wrong. The wind blows in the opposite direction. The sky is a strange color. Even my voice sounds like someone who hasn't spoken in a long time.
When I rehearse I don't have to memorize my lines. The auditorium holds my thoughts and all I have to do is step into them. I am getting close and closer to something, but I don't know what it is. Only that it is there. On my dress. In the air. When it is not my turn to be on stage I sit in the wings, and think, and sew.

It's as if the person slips between past and present, and unexpectedly her "character" life is more real than her present life. I love it.

And this is from the first, little bit of a story - A Threadless Way:

When I first moved here, I lived in a friend's room in a loft. I had never lived in loft before, and it was strange to do so in such a quiet place. Downtown was unlike any downtown I had ever been in: it's emptiness surprised me, but it was empty only of certain kinds of people. They were around, but they lived on the sidewalk and in tents. And stores and businesses existed, but not the kind tourists want to shop at. The month - August- was hot, the way I like weather to be, and in the evenings when it cooled down I rode my bike in the neighborhoods next to mine, and sometimes to a cornfield that someone had planted nearby. I would get off my bike and look at the plants, at the cobs of corn hidden in their pale green husks. I liked that the field was there, with the city's buildings so close to it. I liked that it was there.

Again, I find this writing so atmospheric. It reminds me intensely of lull periods in my own life, when I had time to wander in a city and find odd, untended places, with no-one, just some plants and insects and the quiet. For me, it's really beautiful writing.

[Caleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the quietest, most arresting book I've read in a while. Safe to say Cain is one of the quietest writers out there, period. Reading her is like reading the inside of a rock; it's infinite, infinitely small and infinitely vast. Disembodied poetics, I think that's what some people call it, what she does. I think...I can't be sure...these labels...

There is a pastoral kind of evocation of Richard Brautigan in Cain's writing, perhaps late Brautigan, when he's basically chronicling his piddling doings, his wandering about nature and in and out of relationships and seeing old friends. The veil is pulled; these aren't stories representative of people and situations, these are stories about people and situations. If that makes sense.

Whereas Cain's earlier book, I GO TO SOME HOLLOW takes place in mostly rural or natural settings, there is more urban landscape in CREATURE. A nice counterpoint, they complement one another.

I can't go on to say more. Amina Cain is a beautiful writer; two opening/early lines from two consecutive stories posit: 'Lately I've been having a hard time knowing what's good'...and: 'I'm ashamed of what I think about literature.'...

In my mind I fused those two phrases together, because they seemed to speak to me independent of their relative contexts. There is so much truth and, subjectively, I can relate to how her characters exist along a wavelength of self-conflict. This seems genuine, a genuine kind of real conflict, and I have to say, about 95% of the "literature" I've had to read lately (especially of the 'literary kind of literature) comes off as very disingenuous: careless with characters as people, careless with their emotions and personal lives, careless with the reader's own time, careless, careless, careless.

It can be said: Cain is not careless with the lives inhabited in her pages. Cain is not careless with the readers time. She is allowing us into extremely intimate spaces via these words.

And I appreciate that a great deal.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Brian]

I'm convinced there is a thread to this collection of stories. I just couldn't find it. Amina Cain is clearly a talented writer but I think I might not have been the right reader at the right time for these stories.

That being said, there are two stories ("Delicately Feeling" and "There's an Excess") that really stood out and beckoned a second reading. I will come back to the others again someday - perhaps when I am not holiday-addled and jetlagging.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A raw, exposed self goes about the world. Each one of these contains a weirdness or an offness, although each offness is different from the others. I like the similarity and the difference. She plays with consciousness the way a child would turn a stone around and around in her palm. Watching it intently. I am reminded of Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett but I liked this one more. Its interiority is not really an interior, in that it's not closed off, the exterior freely steps in. Tracks dirt on the carpet; the rainwater gets all on the sofa. There is an unsureness about each voice when it comes to the world, and yet a confident projection of that unsureness ensues. Some have said 'quiet,' but there are some not-so-quiet moments here too. A better word, I think, is 'comforting,' I find these stories comforting in their not striving and yet not not striving either. There is a comforting dwelling in whatever happens, whatever fucking shows up.

[Kasey Jueds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I need to add a little disclaimer here about how I seem to only give books 4 or 5 stars these days--yup, it's true. And mostly because my reading time is so precious and so limited--if I'm not absolutely loving a book I'm unlikely to finish it, and so it's unlikely to end up on Goodreads for me.

That being said, 5 stars for Creature! These are short stories, but absolutely unlike any I've ever read. Spare (really beyond spare--but I can't think of a word that would be fitting), mysterious, strange, full of space and questions and, at the same time, full of profoundly deep feeling. I found myself empathizing with the characters over and over again, feeling a deep kinship with them in spite of the very different circumstances of our lives.

This book was a lucky find at Book Court in Brooklyn; I'd never have come across it without this amazing independent bookstore and the staff member who recommended it. Another reason independent bookstores are wonderful and excellent.

[Patrick Cottrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Amina Cain's work is like taking a walk. I felt calm. I felt comforted. I felt odd joy. There is nothing cynical in this book. There is a hardness and a plainness coursing through the text. I loved it.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book full of ambient, quiet ghosts. Characters and scenes that seem to be half-asleep, nearly floating, nearly dead. My kind of book.

[Nathália · Rating 4 out of 5]

4-4.5

[Alysha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't get it. This book read like somebody took all their writing practice prompts, stapled them together, and decided it was good enough to publish.

[nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

amina cain the things i would do to be your friend are endless! what a special little book to start the year

“one of my favorite times here, when i most feel a part of the community, is when we carry things together. twice a week someone from the monastery goes into town to buy the things we need for the coming days, then comes back, usually during dinner. we have to stop eating to carry vegetables from the truck to the walk-in or to the pantry. i love everyone then. i also like when there are talks at night in the dining room, because it’s a chance to be with the others in a different way, in chairs, waiting for someone to begin speaking. i look around at people talking and laughing at a time when we are usually silent. i’ve never lived in a community before.” (26).

“it’s beautiful how long a friendship can last, even when it is awkward to be around each other. when there is nothing to say, neither person wants to let go. i think this is because the body still remembers the relationship, and most likely the bodies keep it alive in spite of the mind. the best thing would be to spend time with each other physically, but this is not always possible or appropriate.” (109).


“outside i can see my past. here is where i stood with a friend and talked about a movie. here is the exact moment i knew i wanted to write. here’s the bed i slept in with someone i once loved. here is the weather when i had bronchitis. here is the emotion when i said goodbye.” (58).

[Helen McClory · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those rare books that can work magic - a collection of slender stories not so much made of words but cold flowing water. I dipped into this when in need of kinship and calm. I'll probably keep dipping into it to rediscover what Cain conjures here.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style in these stories makes them difficult to connect to. They describe emotions but the feeling I get as a reader is distance and numb feelings. I liked the last story, "Delicately Feeling," best, but had to pick the book back up a few times to get that far.

That cover though....

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fragmentary moments inscribed in narrative. What begin plausibly autobiographical reflections gradually move towards more stylized or surprising forms, while maintaining an intrinsic quiet insight.

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creature is a mighty fine collection of finely-crafted fictions full of defamiliarizing compressions and suspensions, the narrator(s) alternately winsomely whimsical and devastatingly deadpan.

[Eliza Marin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t say I enjoyed this book.
It’s very stale and lacks contexts.
The sentences are too short for the reader to dive into characters’ life or at least empathize with them.
Also, even though the short stories have different characters, it just seems the same tone of voice everywhere. The first person inner dialogue. The rumination. It’s very solitary and lack vulnerability.

Sometimes the chosen scenes seem too random and meaningless. It was very hard for me to evoke any feeling but frustration from this book.
I stay away from being rude or judge books too harsh, but it seemed to me this book is way too unchiseled.
It reads just like someone is learning how to write just now, by publishing this book.

[bets · Rating 4 out of 5]

a book so openly written, it starts revealing your most underlying, unspoken, and even almost absent emotions. the writer constantly confronts the reader (almost personally), about these feelings, you feel fulfilled.

[Susan McCarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find Creature to be a book very much about reading, and about the ways in which reading and experience become intertwined and tangled, become unparsable. The opening stories teach me how to read the book: "At home, I crawled into a bed and read a story I had read many times before, that I had taught in some of my classes. There was something in that story I wanted to sink into: the rich darkness of a barn, the putting the hand out into the darkness to see what it touched." And, in "Attached to a Self": "I might get this wrong, but I think I remember him saying that in his tradition the word is supposed to send a person into the great silence." This book is the gift of a hand put out in the darkness. It is a gift perched on the edge of that great silence--the desolate corral in "They've Been Bringing Them Here for Decades."

The threads running through these stories create a web. In "Attached to a Self," Cain writes, "So there is a web, but that web doesn't actually exist, and sometimes it is multiple. Do you think you are walking around in a web?" As her reader, you are in her web. She is spins, weaves like Penelope--this is the flipped-stitch side of the cloth of the hero's journey. These characters are protean, from Proteus, and we leave Odysseus to follow their paths toward and away from each other. These paths meander--they have left home, but they will not return. They are without the fixed phallic point of a triumphant homecoming. In some cases, the characters are literally homeless, or their homes are full of others (couples, monks and students). Cain's narrators do not slay these others, but instead live with them, invite them in. This is, of course, the experience of reading. Cain gives us a home in her web, it is a home that does and does not exist. It is both a book and the world, and the the lines between where we are and what is real blur and flicker, invert. We are both in the web, and not. There is no web. But of course there is.

From "The Sleeve of My Coat":
"When I look at you I see a character from a book."
"I am not a character."
"You are. An annoying one."

(This book is also very funny.)

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

the genius of amina cain's small stories comes with the crosshatching of the mundane and the boring with alarming murmurs of violence and intense intimacy in relationships. each perfectly paced viewfinder allows the reader into a diary ~ beauties of a life spent mostly in the strangeness of internal thought and visual motion of the body going through an empty city, hotel, farm, theater, rooms of many homes. i read this book on a car ride through illinois in the back seat, at night in the dark and freezing rain, with the small light from my iphone hitting the paper. as an avid nonfiction reader, sometimes when i real surreal and experimental fiction like this, i subconsciously read the whole thing with the assumption that all these characters ~ creatures ~ are amina herself, and that they are all real. they are too strange to not be real. just like the back cover of ariana reines' books, i despise the thurston moore quote/review very much. these are women's stories, the ecstasies of being alone and being attached, longing for rejection, over-analyzing the arm and the leg as it extends from the body. these quiet creatures are watching themselves, with restraint of detail so that we may put ourselves into them.

[ece · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”

[Marijana☕✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝. 𝐈 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤, 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐈 𝐝𝐨."

Ove kratke, apstraktne priče daju nagoveštaj onoga što će Amina Cain uraditi u "Indelicacy", sa fokusom na žene koje (žele da) pišu i koje se ponekad doživljavaju kao da posmatraju sebe kroz stranice knjige. Granice fikcije i stvarnosti se preklapaju i čitalac ima osećaj da se kreće kroz izmaglicu sa jako malo smisla, ali uprkos tome postoje određene emocije koje se ne daju opisati. Amina Cain je zaista jedinstven pisac i volela bih da napiše još neki roman jer me izmešta na poseban način (da ne kažem na posebna me vodi mesta 🤭).

"𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲. 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫: 𝐚𝐦 𝐈 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧?"

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really sure what to say about this book. It was sort of mesmerizing by way of making the familiar and mundane unfamiliar and slightly uncomfortable. It's like a series of character vignettes where each character is slightly estranged from themselves. The title feels incredibly apt: Being human as being a creature. An animal we can never fully know. Or trust. There is a body and a mind. Sometimes they align. Frequently they don't. And at it's most painful when they are in opposition. But this is not a book of extremes. I would say it is subtle in how it undoes us.

But I can't even tell you if I liked it. I do seem glad to have read it.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Amina Cain so much! There is a dreamy quality to her writing that is lovely and hard to pin down. She also writes about female interiority really beautiful. These stories were slow and quiet but very compelling and full. I’m really obsessed with how much she writes about these women going on walks and reading. I love reading about women doing the things that I too like to do.


Honestly 4.5 / 5

[Maya Burke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was pretty decent. Some of the short stories were more engaging than others but overall it was pretty good. I loved the chapter about the narrator and hee sister and their nightly routine together. It felt like home I can’t explain it.

3.75/ rivers 🌊🐠

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read another reviewer describe Amina Cain as one of our “quietest” writers, and I think that’s a perfect description. Very short stories charged with the force of a moment, keenly felt and remembered. Her experiments with form never feel willful, always holding their characters beautifully.

[Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Observational Shorts
Review of the Dorothy Project paperback (2013)

[Lavelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I want to make another costume for myself. I want to perform another thing on a wall, like truth, but I don't know what truth looks like—I haven't experienced it yet."

[Rachel B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much the same vibe as Indelicacy, which also intrigued me. Haunting and exquisite.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thin and insubstantial, like eating a cobweb. JCO’s “wan little husks of autofiction” tweet vindicated.

[Mika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange, dreamlike & delightful to read