Without Falling

by Leslie Dick

Tracy, who compulsively repeats familiar feminine tragedies, moves from one disastrous love affair to the next, almost oblivious to the cities in which she finds herself-London, Berlin, Ankara, New York-and even to the objects of her passion. Without Falling charts a woman's quest for an impossible sexual identity. Family melodrama, self mutilation, and the active pursuit of rejection are presented as perverse pleasure, somewhere between the indulgence of tears, the squirm of embarrassment, and a shriek of reluctant laughter.

129 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Lillian Lippold · Rating 4 out of 5]

absolutely nutty. that kind of psychoanalytic book that i’m always a little scared of as i’m reading it. and of course it’s beautiful.

[Jena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this book four stars if it didn't provoke latenet masochistic tendencies in me...like Acker, Leslie Dick explores the mythology of feminine passivity; unlike Acker's characters, Tracy never exhibits transformative wildness, and so the novel never reaches those Lynch-esque heights of multiplicitous feminine subjectivity.