The Spectacle of the Body

by Noy Holland

A debut collection of short stories transforms the English language to produce intriguing effects, in tales that chronicle her mother's long, agonizing death

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction

189 pages, Hardcover

First published May 24, 1994

About the author

Noy Holland’s latest work is I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like: New and Selected Stories, out now from Counterpoint Press. Noy's debut novel, Bird, came out in 2015. Other collections of short fiction and novellas include Swim for the Little One First (FC2), What Begins with Bird (FC2), and The Spectacle of the Body (Knopf). She has published work in The Kenyon Review, Antioch, Conjunctions, The Quarterly, Glimmer Train, Western Humanities Review, The Believer, NOON, and New York Tyrant, among others. She was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award for artistic merit and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She has taught for many years in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, as well as at Phillips Andover and the University of Florida. She serves on the board of directors at Fiction Collective Two.

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was utterly amazing writing. The language--deeply evocative and transporting. I have to admit that I don't quite know what the stories were about, as the action is a bit lost in the deliberately vague sentence structures. But it was a joy to read, a difficult joy. "There is a web of the parts of you left that the people you love will know about." "I cannot get free of her. She is tongued, gashed, towered. A door will open. She finds me eating. She finds me lacking. I am in some mall or lobby, some truck stop or Sears, six-stone set in some riverbed she finds me. She finds me on the road some night like as not in your rig some night where we have maybe swung wide in the gone seas of Ohio."

[Marie-Therese · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Beautiful language and striking imagery can't save these shapeless, torpid pieces from their inertia.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 38 pgs (20%)

Evokes a sense of feeling (but at a remove) and what actually happens doesn't matter a whole lot. I read two shorter stories and thought I'd give the longest one in the book a try before calling it quits, but after reading the first few pages I was too bored to continue...

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faulknerian symphony - the music is powerful and consistent (passion and craft harmonize beginning to end)

[John Tristan · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's boring, I can't even put myself into the story. The writing was quite good but it's empty, lack of imagination and artistry.

[Shaylah · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection of prose, "Orbit" stands out as the gem. Every one of Holland's lines in this story is perfect. It killed me to read something so good. But in many of the other pieces, Holland's language became slightly too vague to where it was difficult to grasp the narrative. I would still recommend this, though, without a doubt, to anyone with an appreciation of inventive, atmospheric prose that caters to a subtley creepy, thick-heat-of-summer aesthetic.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend in my workshop just lent me this book, and it's really beautiful. It's training me to read more slowly, I think.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://5cense.com/delish_trop_goth.htm

[Devin Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

also one of the best books ever

[Janice · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this fewer stars, I would. This seemed less like short stories, than her thinking philosophically about life.