I Fear My Pain Interests You - Stephanie LaCava

I Fear My Pain Interests You by Stephanie LaCava / ISBN 9781839766022 / 182-page paperback with flaps from Verso Fiction

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An absurdist tale of fame, coporality, and excessive observation from the author of The Superrationals.

Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New York and heads to Montana. She's seeking to escape both the eyes of the world and the echoing voice of that last bad man. But a chance encounter with a dubious doctor in a graveyard, and the discovery of a dozen old film reels, opens the door to a study of both the peculiarities of her body and the absurdities of her famous family.

A literary take on cinema du corps, Stephanie LaCava's new novel is an audaciously sexy and moving exploration of culture and connections, bodies and breakdowns.

"Elegant ... [I Fear My Pain Interests You] is seeded with references to jazz music and to body-horror French arthouse film, and these frame LaCava's attempt to do something transformative with violence and suffering."--Daisy Hildyard, Guardian

"A sharp critical vision lurches into focus: of culture as commodity, of suffering as currency, and of the female body as this agon's generalized battleground."--Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder

"LaCava's book animates its story with something of Patricia Highsmith's sociopathology and Clarice Lispector’s macabre glamor."--JC Holburn, XRAY