Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 08/02/2018,
Pagination: 112 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Faber & Faber,
Published By: FABER & FABER ,
Book Classification: Literature & literary studies,
Dimensions: 132 x 197 x 10
ISBN13/EAN/SKU: 9780571346615
WINNER OF THE MICHAEL MURPHY MEMORIAL PRIZEPOETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICEIn the language of fan fiction, a 'Mary Sue' is an idealised and implausibly flawless character: a female archetype that can infuriate audiences for its perceived narcissism.
Such is the setting for this brilliant and important debut by Sophie Collins. In a series of verse and prose collages, Who Is Mary Sue? exposes the presumptive politics behind writing and readership: the idea that men invent while women reflect; that a man writes of the world outside while a woman will turn to the interior.
Part poetry and part reportage, at once playful and sincere, these fictive-factive miniatures deploy original writing and extant quotation in a mode of pure invention. In so doing, they lift up and lay down a revealing sequence of masks and mirrors that disturb the reflection of authority.
A work of captivation and correction, this is a book that will resonate with anyone concerned with identity, shame, gender, trauma, composition and culture: everyone, in other words, who wishes to live openly and think fearlessly in the modern world. Who Is Mary Sue? is a work for our times and a question for our age: it is a handbook for all those willing to reimagine prescriptive notions of identity and selfhood.