燃えるスカートの少女 (角川文庫) [文庫]

R・ブラッドベリ、R・カーヴァーの読者たちは、きっと彼女の虜になる。

戦争で「唇」を失った夫、父が死んだ日に異常性欲に見舞われた図書館司書、せむし男と激しい恋におちた高校生……ファンタジックな物語が、とてつもなく切なく、哀しく、けれど温かく描かれる、全11篇の短篇集。

--このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。

人間から逆進化してゆく恋人、戦争で唇を失いキスができない夫、父親が死んだ日に客たちとセックスする図書館員、火の手と氷の手をもつふたりの少女…想像と言葉の魔法を駆使して紡がれる、かつてない物語。不可解なのに現実的、暗く明るく、哀しくて愛おしい。そこから放たれる奇跡的な煌めきに、私たちはいつしか呑み込まれ、圧倒され、胸をつかまれる―。各国で絶賛された傑作短編集、待望の文庫化。

不可思議で、奇妙で、痛々しく、哀しみに満たされた、現実を語る物語たち。この世界のあらゆることの、儚さ、哀しさ、愛しさ。少女たちが繰り広げるそれらの感情が、物語を超え、現実の世界に突き刺さる。傑作短編集。 --このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。

In conventional fiction, war heroes return home minus an arm or a leg--or, to take Hemingway's worst-case scenario, the family jewels. In Aimee Bender's deeply unconventional collection, however, an even more suggestive body part goes AWOL: "Steve returned from the war without his lips." The army doctors have temporarily replaced them with a plastic disc, which impairs his speech. Luckily, this doesn't prevent him and his wife from engaging in some slightly surrealistic sexual maneuvers: "That night in bed, he grazed the disc over her raised nipples like a UFO and the plastic was cool on her skin. It felt like they were in college and toying with desk items as sexual objects."

That same combo--sex and off-kilter surrealism--provides Bender with her modus operandi. In "Call My Name," for example, a young heiress tails a stranger back to his apartment, gets her dress sliced off, and then consents to be trussed to a chair while he watches a TV documentary about Mozart. "Quiet Please" features a libidinous librarian who takes on all, uh, comers in the back room. Bender isn't, it should be said, simply a purveyor of French postcards. Her prose is exquisitely shaped, and its singsong rhythms suggest something out of a wised-up, whacked-out fairy tale. Indeed, if the Brothers Grimm had been a little more attuned to the pleasure principle, their fables might have boasted at least a family resemblance to Aimee Bender's. --James Marcus
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

The wise, highly original 16 stories in Bender's debut collection take place at the intersection of fairy tale and everyday life, of hilarity and heartbreak. From the book's first sentence ("My lover is experiencing reverse evolution"), it's clear that this world is far from ordinary. As the lover in the story ("The Rememberer") moves from ape to sea turtle to salamander, the reader moves from startled dislocation to delight. After this strong opening, what follows is equally good and equally surprising. The plots range from the unexpected to the fantastic: a woman gives birth to her own mother; in an effort to drive away grief, a bereaved librarian seduces man after man in the library's back room; a mermaid and an imp enjoy a high-school romance; an orphaned boy develops an uncanny talent for finding lost objects. As Bender explores a spectrum of human relationships, her perfectly pitched, shapely writing blurs the lines between prose and poetry. While full of funny moments, these tales are neither slight nor glib. They recognize that to be human is to be immensely fragile, and their characters are always unmistakably human. In "What You Left in the Ditch," a woman whose husband has returned from the war without lips tells her teenage lover, "The most unbearable thing I think by far... is hope," yet hopeAthat isolation and grief are temporary, that love exists, that the ugly can be made beautifulAis what she and all the stories' bruised and lonely characters insist on. Bender's is a unique and compassionate voice, and her debut is a string of jewels. First serial to Granta, GQ and Story; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?

Aimee Bender's stories portray a world twisted on its axis, a place of unconvention that resembles nothing so much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. From the first line of each tale she lets us know she is telling a story, but the moral is never quite what we expect. Bender's prose is glorious: musical and colloquial, inimitable and heartrending.

Here are stories of men and women whose lives are shaped--and sometimes twisted--by the power of extraordinary desires, erotic and otherwise. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is the debut of a major American writer.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

"Aimee Bender's debut is a string of jewels."
--Publishers Weekly

"Superbly imagined. Bender has hit the ground running."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Bender's stories read like modern fables--with a healthy sense of twisted humor thrown in for good measure."
--The Village Voice Literary Supplement

"Aimee Bender's stories come as a revelation....She's a thrilling discovery."
--Jonathan Lethem, author of Girl in Landscape and As She Climbed Across the Table

"Keep your eye on this writer and her highwire act. I have a feeling she'll be keeping readers breathless for a long time to come."
--Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion

--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

"Aimee Bender's debut is a string of jewels."
--Publishers Weekly

"Superbly imagined. Bender has hit the ground running."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Bender's stories read like modern fables--with a healthy sense of twisted humor thrown in for good measure."
--The Village Voice Literary Supplement

"Aimee Bender's stories come as a revelation....She's a thrilling discovery."
--Jonathan Lethem, author of Girl in Landscape and As She Climbed Across the Table

"Keep your eye on this writer and her highwire act. I have a feeling she'll be keeping readers breathless for a long time to come."
--Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion

--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles. Her stories have appeared in Granta, GQ, Story, The Antioch Review, and several other publications. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, and she is currently at work on her first novel. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

ベンダー,エイミー
1969年、生まれる。カリフォルニア大学アーヴァイン校創作科出身。小学校教諭をつとめた後、「Granta」「GQ」「The American Review」などの雑誌にショート・ストーリーを発表。最初の短篇集である本書は刊行後ただちに書評家たちの絶賛を受け、98年のニューヨーク・タイムズ紙の注目の一冊に選ばれる。2000年に初の長篇『私自身の見えない徴』(角川書店)を発表。ロス・アンジェルス・タイムズ紙の注目の一冊に選ばれるとともに、ベストセラーリストにも登場、確実にファンを広げる。現在は南カリフォルニア大学で教えながら精力的に執筆を続けている。ロス・アンジェルス在住

管 啓次郎
1958年生まれ。明治大学理工学部教授(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)