Ex Utero

Rating:
Summary: A HUGE disappointment
Review: I love modern books by modern women -- Kate Atkinson, Liz Jensen, Lisa Alther -- that have a sense of the irrational. I also love trawling the Fiction aisles for new women writers. Naturally I was intrigued by this title, and bought it to read -- what a letdown! This is book has no plot -- a woman loses her uterus, looks for it, gets scared that she'll never find it, then finds it. Big deal. It's completely improbable, but not even in a fun way -- reading about some guy using a power drill to try to re-open a woman's bloodless vagina, with skins shards flying everywhere, made me positively sick. This is not the type of thing where a woman will get it, and a man won't -- I'm a woman, and to me this book SUCKED.

Rating:
Summary: Ex Utero
Review: There are so many tidy examples of stereotypical points of view about sexuality that fit into this short book. It's a cozy fit, just like Rita's womb sitting next to her in the booth at the diner.

It's a relief to laugh at common opinions that in normal life feel like sharp barbs.

Thank you Ms. Foos.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, revealing, surreal---Definitely worth reading
Review: This book was so funny I couldn't put it down--perhaps because I identified with the main character, a childess woman heading into the end of her fertile years. The book actually changed me--which is a rare and wonderful reading experience--especially if done while laughing out loud.

Despite the constant humor (ala Thomas Pynchon), the motivations of the each character's odd behavior(s) seemed very real and revealing to me especially when juxtaposed against lost uteruses, sealed vaginas that have "closed up shop" and a world full of erections.

It was interesting to see how people depend on each other in a whirlwind of crazness. The book isn't expensive and it's a small investment of your time too--big font on small pages and it starts out with a humorous bang immediately. DO IT! I'm following up by reading F/32, by Eurydice. It is also amazing and impacting.