Nudes

by Elle Nash

Beginning with a story of an ex sex-worker drifting through a small rural town in the south, and ending with a young woman’s wedding night, who learns from her new husband what it takes to kill a man, Nash writes across the complications of working class women, rendering their desires with visceral prose and psychologically dissecting the fundamental root that threads her work: craving and the conflicts within.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Feminism, Contemporary, Horror, Class, The United States Of America

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2021

About the author

Elle Nash is the author of the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O - The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.’ Her debut collection of stories, Nudes, was published in 2021. Her next novel, Deliver Me, is out from Unnamed Press in 2023.

Her work appears in Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, BOMB Magazine, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastation flutters the pages on to the next story. Empathy and a clandestine tear close the book.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

so many bangers in this book. elle is the real deal and one to watch.

[Nemo ☠️ (pagesandprozac) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this but I feel like this is a very personal reaction on my part and very individual - and judging by the other ratings and reviews, I'm certainly in the minority.

I just felt like barely any of the stories had a point. I didn't get it. And I'm not going to put my whole fuckin' life story on Goodreads but let's just say, I'm intimately acquainted with many themes in these stories and I still hated them.

Again, it's probably just a me thing. Your mileage may vary.

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elle Nash only whips out bangers.

[_sapphosangel_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

maybe 3.5 stars?
there were so many typos and grammatical errors which made this even harder to read
this took me so long also because of ~mental illness~ so i'm proud of myself that i didn't give up and i'm slowly getting back into reading but it is hard

[Peter Derk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think what Elle Nash delivers that a lot of authors don't is a very authentic version of the rural/suburban sort of trashy realism. If you grew up somewhere that is NOT a big city, you know these people, you've been friends with some of these people, you went to school with them, you wonder how they're doing every so often, some of them post pictures of their kids and that's a little scary, some of them are going through some big problems in public in a way that's more than a little off-putting...

I think when writers from big cities and who come from that MFA writing background try to do this sort of thing, they never get it right. It always has that feel of like, I don't know, a sitcom set in New York where the characters are scumbags but live in nice apartments and wear good sweaters. A lot of times if feels like the lowest class person those writers can imagine is basically the most successful person you know.

These are writers who will have a dinner scene at Cheesecake Factory to indicate how pathetic the characters are. "He didn't even realize that taking his wife to Cheesecake Factory is pathetic!?"

I'm a non-secret Cheesecake Factory stan, by the way. We went there after our cat died, both of us were super sad and just kind of didn't know what to do. We just ate there because it was open and there were lots of darker, more secluded booths, and that was kind of the vibe we both wanted. But also, Cheesecake Factory is fine, y'all. Nobody is pretending it's the fanciest restaurant on earth, but if you grew up in a rural place, it may be the fanciest place in town.

Anyway.

I've just gotten really tired of that fake-feeling attempt at writing characters from places other than New York or LA, and I've gotten tired of stories of people from those places as well, and boy it does end up limiting what you can read in terms of "literary fiction" a little more than you might think.

I'm not into the "the suburbs, now that's REALLY scary" kind of thing that most people who don't live in suburbs want to write about.

Good thing Elle Nash is around, eh?

[Brooks Sterritt · Rating 5 out of 5]

"My hunger returns and I eat cup upon cup of vanilla pudding and then shit myself in my sleep."

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories are such hit or miss for me and quite a lot of these missed ?

It’s a shame cause the ones I liked, I really liked. My favs were:
- dead to me
- define hungry
- a deep well
- unsolved mysteries

I would read this author again tho as I feel there was some potential

[Quin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Queen of Colorado Springs

[Josh Doughty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Self harm, sex, small towns.

While I’m not huge on short stories (I’m trying still as you can see), a lot of these had themes I could relate to (parenting, fear of future, never having enough money, obsession towards someone or something, late 90s/early2000s references).

The writing is great and I wanted to invest more time in the characters, but the stories are over in a few pocket-sized pages.

However, I can’t say I’ve read stories of this caliber ever. Would re read before Eve Babitz any day.

With all that being said, I am looking forward to reading Animals Eat Each Other and the upcoming Gag Reflex on Clash.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

a refined story collection of deep shitbags. I loved it.

[ThatBookish_deviant]

Paused on page 39.

[Elizabeth Aldrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal collection of short stories that will make you bleed. No one has craft down quite like Elle.

[Paige Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Redress and read Animals Eat Each Other Instead. 2.4/5 (book is half height normal so really 100pgs) A bipolar book in that most stories are rather aimless while the rest are perfectly poignant. Poor intro better suited for a graphic novel: The lack of names make it confusing, especially when there’re immediately three girls talking, the dialogue all in one paragraph. Not to say there’s no flow but there’re random thoughts and the lack of formatting makes the irrelevance more glaring. The topless mom and murder talk were fun, but things don’t get good until the end—same with the second story. Things don’t get fun until the fourth story, “Brittanies,” that sounds like a Juggalo giving his alibi in a Law & Order sketch.

The nostalgia of the next AIM-centric story, “Cat World,” is entertaining though repetitive with asterisk cringe (though not as bad as the incest-adjacent older brother), the vibe teetering on dangerous. Decent drug-drenched story, always making you question the malevolence of older boys like the MC. The next two stories are boring even though one has auto-fellatio.

The following one’s insight into motherhood is of interest though could be cliche for all I know, but it has some great twists and scares. After that, I learned what pukkaki is and the secret equipment of a desperate kleptomaniac. Fav line is “this year alone, I’ve thrown up at least $5,000 worth of food. Body by bulimia.”

Lots of cold lesbians, stinted convos, a few prosey essays on disorders, and premises that need more fleshing out because transitions from ideas are always nonexistent, like the author thinks we’re in her head so have all the same connective assumptions/associations.

All the handholding between friends is weird and strangely more off-putting (it at least more redundant) than the wannabe deep death/screw America talk. Almost every end is abrupt and disappointing, like Animals Eat Each Other except I quite liked that book.

[dane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down the best collection of short stories I’ve ever read. I am an Elle Nash fan first and human second. Her stories are alive and breathing as they dig into the nuances of the connected themes throughout each story. I’ve not encountered a collection with this many stories in it, but it was so necessary and welcome in order to fully explore the themes.

I loved it so much I bought a physical copy partway through reading, and I am desperately seeking the cover from SF/LD Books because I need it all. I will absolutely be retrying Animals Eat Each Other, as well as reading Gag Reflex and Deliver Me as my craving for more of Nash’s work is feral and needs satisfied.

Her work is like no other. It explores the complexities of having a physical self and existing on the internet as a means of escaping the body, the stories come off the page with the attention to syntax and senses. It’s an electrifying read from start to finish.

[meow · Rating 3 out of 5]

stories from small towns:
sometimes brutal, sometimes kind,
inescapable

loving clueless boys
loving anorexic girls
loving shit parents

conversational
with salt splashes of surreal
always embodied

Some fav lines:
She wants me to be vulnerable but only in a language she can listen to. (186)

My foot caught a banister on way down, and we tumbled forward to the landing. For a split second we both were weightless. I thought of the grave then, a deep well, each new moment a handful of dirt being thrown inside. (168-9)

I’m just a normal girl with jeans and a thrift store t-shirt, a girl without cat-ears or a tail. (50)

[Laura Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

For me, Nudes was really not a good read. There’s something gratuitous and disgusting in the writing - I think perhaps it feels somehow false to me, like there’s something just not genuine there, or like Nash is trying to be shocking for shocking’s sake. I’m not averse to a sense of grossness and grittiness in books - Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is one of my favourite books - but this feels like it lacks substance behind the gross.

It’s also insanely repetitive - most stories follow this formula: vulnerable woman + specific issue (most often eating disorder or pregnancy) + bad boyfriend. I think that repetitive is one thing you really cannot afford to be in a short story collection. The stories are also extremely short, two being literally one page, which I don’t like although I know this is more my personal taste.

I’m sorry to say this, but Nudes kind of reads like someone who has listened to a lot of Lana Del Rey, watched Girl, Interrupted on repeat, and had a tumblr account for way too long (yes this all applies to me).

I prefer the earlier stories, and there are some passages throughout which are very emotive and well written. Many of the stories also speak to a lot of people’s experience of being a woman, of poverty and of violence which is of course important (hence the 2 stars).

I had really high hopes for this based on reviews and the blurb, but it was a miss overall for me.

[Mind the Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

Filterlösa cigaretter, temporära anställningar, förfall, vapenvåld och prekära existenser i opiumkrisens nordamerika. Typisk karaktär: en kanske diskvattensblond kvinna sitter på en motellrumsäng och smörjer in benen med hudkräm medan hon pratar med sitt manliga sällskap om skjutvapen. De beställer champagne via room service och dricker på det där dekadenta sätter med handen i ett grepp runt flaskhalsen.

Som om jag inte fått nog av litterärt mörker och nihilism den här läsmånaden. Tror starkt på Elle Nashs författarskap, även om jag inte räknar in mig själv i GenZ-målgruppen. Själva utgåvan har minst sagt grafisk edge och indieförlaget verkar heta 'Short flight/Long drive', allt det där älskar jag.

Har lyssnat på ett antal poddar och där är Mademoiselle Nash livlig och varm, med väldigt vettiga antikapitalistiska åsikter m.m.

[Jay Slayton-Joslin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of stories that show characters and people in the way I'm learning only Elle Nash can. Interesting places and events, but the way the characters react and feel just feels more authentic and genuine to where they're from than lots of other books.

[Justin Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will make you uncomfortable.
I like that. So I liked this book a lot.
I also really appreciate that it was legit pocket sized. Nash has a way with words and her stories keep you coming back for the next one. They also kind of terrify me a little bit.

[Leslie]

I only didn’t finish this because I had to return it to the library. What I read was really dark and enjoyable.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The body is multiple things at once, maybe not everything at the same time. Sometimes I do think the body is a tool, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes the body is a blessing, sometimes it’s a trap. Sometimes I love my body, I love having my body and feel so grateful for it, and other times I want to obliterate it. And I think everyone has these competing experiences with their bodies, so I want to examine those in my characters."

From my interview with Elle Nash for Nudes on Full Stop: https://www.full-stop.net/2021/03/30/...

[Jack Tedone · Rating 4 out of 5]

the Tove Lo lyrics at the start are everything

[LeaVixx · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird, disturbing but mostly boring. I literally just finished the book and only remember probably two of the stories as the other ones just felt somehow pointless, confusing and hard to get into.

[Erik Peterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pornographic in the most boring way possible

[Katie Pyrah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well that was depressing.

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

STEPPING FURTHER INTO PERIL

The very first impression of Elle Nash’s collection of short stories Nudes (Short Flight / Long Drive Books) is that it is a very slick, small paperback book of a higher quality than a lot of paperback books I’ve purchased lately from indie lit outfits. The authors photo in the back shows a young woman in front of a teddy bear holding an AK-type assault rifle without a magazine. I don’t know enough about guns to pretend like I know the exact make.

Nash knows about violence, though. A thick oppressive layer of tension pervades the collection, filling up the spaces between the short punchy sentences without let-up. From what I can tell, the protagonist of the stories is always a woman in the pathway of considerable psychological or physical violence, and we watch helplessly as she sometimes steps further into peril.

The 24 stories on offer here are bleak, and I kind of knew that going in, with some trepidation. We were in Bret Easton Ellis territory for the first bit of the book and I sighed as the characters lined up to do their shallow, damaged thing. However, as I got about 60 pages in and encountered the long title story “Nudes,” something else came into the picture alongside the bleakness, framing it differently somehow if not giving any respite: the realization that Elle Nash really knows how to write short stories. The quality and polish of the writing, the unclouded precision of the prose, the exquisite unfolding of the suspense, all reveal a writer who has gone a long way to master the craft of writing. I have not read her previously published novel Animals Eat Each Other, so I don’t know how much of the Elle Nash game you see in Nudes was already in place from the get go, how much was just innate.

It took until the longer story “Nudes” for me to sink into the aquarium of the book and get used to its chilly temperature. An unnamed narrator and her fiancée are staying in a condo and drifting in their relationship when the narrator has an encounter with Thomas, an alluring neighbor. Things develop; I don’t want to give away too much because as much as the characters appear to have a deliberate and robotic shallowness, Nash pushes situations to show the plot running away with them, life taking them to dangerous destinations dripping with significance. Maybe it’s a sign that a story has substance not apparent on the surface when you hesitate to spoil it. Another good sign is that you can see the mind-movie unrolling.

Soon after “Nudes” came the story “Dead To Me” which drove the screw to the sticking place that this was a good collection and a great writer. “Dead To Me” was a skin-crawling, yellow-sore-days-later bruiser. Again, can’t give away too much; suffice it to say that Nash often has a type of character—young married mother living in an Updike story with the sexes reversed, now drain the life out of it and turn it into a nightmare. That story will stay with me.

Other stories hit on graphic psychological portraits of women with very tortured, frightening eating disorders (“Thank You, Lauren Greenfield”) or addictive love attachments that compel them like a zombie to first smash a cellphone in an attempt to escape, then contemplate rushing to AT&T before closing to buy a new one just to send a crucial good night text to the one they obsess over (“Survivalist”—another bonafide chiller).

By the time I was done with the book I had seen a variegated gallery of disturbing and disturbed women very carefully painted. I was deep in the heads of a cast of female characters I had worried would be shallow at first, but by the end, I was clawing for the edges of the pool, for a ladder to grasp onto for dear life. Have you ever felt such fear and claustrophobia while reading a book of short stories? How could a short story do that, exactly?

[mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

more like 3.5 tbh :/

i didn't realize till i was about 1/3 thru that elle nash is the same person who wrote 'animals eat each other' which was a book i read and kinda-liked a few years back. i felt mostly the same about this one. elle nash is def great at short stories tho and the good thing about short stories is that i can usually LOVE a few of them even if i don't like the collection overall, which was def the case with this. some of the stories were v strong - esp towards the middle-end of the book. some felt more try-hard than others but in a way that can be still be fun if i'm not feeling too critical (felt the same about 'animals eat each other' at times). all of the stories shared general themes of drug/alcohol use/addiction, sad sex & mental illness, most of them didn't have a whole lot happen. nash def has a unique voice - a lot of gut-punch lines. i had some minor issues w/ the formatting - got confused between stories/narrators. BUT overall i think i'd def read more from nash in the future.

ONE OF MY FAV QUOTES:

'if we re-arranged the molecules and positioned ourselves in exactly the same place at exactly the same time at the very moment before our meeting, would we choose the same path? how you know fate is real, yes. that free will is a lie. every molecule will do as every molecule does. you cannot change it. this was how i understood her.'

[RL Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to review this one. Animals Eat Each Other was something that really blew me away. Nash obviously has a raw style unlike anyone else out there that I've read. That book was something you can't just reccomend to anyone. It is for the open minded and is a mood; you don't want to read that unprepared. As much as I loved that Nudes didn't have the same impact.

Nash is exploding some taboo themes that many of us experience but few of us want to discuss. Nudes suffers from being full of characters that are detached, thus its harder as a reader to get as invested. There also is a repetitive nature amongst the essays/stories. In the end it leaves you a little numb to the chaos that constantly is coming for you. Which maybe is the point.

So again leaving this just a star rating is tough. If you've read Nash before this is probably what you expect. The style is there. However, I'm kinda disappointed in that I don't want this to be another author that gets stuck in one gear and puts out the same thing over and over. I want Nash's talent to explore other worlds; I'm rooting for that.

So in closing it probably accomplished what it wanted; but I was left wishing for more. I'll definitely support whatever comes next.

[Alyssa Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

elle nash writes about women in such a way that my chest hurts.

this shorty story collection features around women in the lower class, often from the south. i think in the current media landscape of the sad women trope, we often see women of extreme privilege or who live in these big major cities like new york and la. elle nash is definitely a breath of fresh air and her work feels so real and grounded in the daily life of the common woman.

i connected with most stories, but this collection is so expansive that there was going to be some misses. overall, as someone’s who trying to get better at short stories myself, i found this collection to be good inspiration. elle nash is amazing at creating little snapshots of people’s lives, she doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities and the unhappy endings. she perfectly encapsulates the experiences of womanhood, how we are effected by the people around us, how we are disadvantaged in the world.

really want to continue to explore all of her work. i adore her wiring which flows nicely and really love her exploration of lower class women.