- Published: 04/01/2018
- ISBN: 9781847085610
- 129x30mm
- 192 pages
Virgin
April Ayers Lawson
Set mostly in the American South, at the crossroads of a world both secular and devoutly Christian, April Ayers Lawson’s stories evoke the inner lives of young women and men navigating sexual, emotional, and spiritual awakenings.
In ‘The Negative Effects of Homeschooling’, Conner, sixteen, accompanies his grieving mother to the funeral of her best friend Charlene, a woman who was once a man. In ‘The Way You Must Play Always’, Gretchen, a thirteen year old who looks even younger, heads into her weekly piano lesson in nervous anticipation of her next illicit meeting with her teacher’s brother, Wesley. ‘Vulnerability’ charts the edgy attraction a promising young artist begins to feel for her art dealer. And in the title story, ‘Virgin’, Jake grapples with the growing chasm between him and his wife, Sheila, a woman who was still a virgin when they wed. At a cocktail party thrown by a wealthy donor to his hospital, he ponders the intertwining imperatives of marriage – sex and love, violation and trust, spirituality and desire – even as he finds himself succumbing to the temptations of his host.
Self-assured and sensual, this collection introduces the work of a young writer of unusual mastery.
£8.99
A tremendous intelligence paradoxically amplified by being constrained by intense emotion; Lawson is a distinctive, and extraordinary, writer
Rivka Galchen
[A] finely observed debut... There is a touch of dark Southern gothic in Lawson's world, but it is lit by the sheer intelligence of her writing and her x-ray eye for the inner dynamics of relationships
Phil Baker, Sunday Times Culture
April Ayers Lawson renders complete portraits of sexual relationships, from start to finish, in a way that is fully honest and brave and even occasionally shameless, in the highest sense. Fearless, bold, these stories are entertaining contemporary classics
Amie Barrodale
April Ayers Lawson on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
The Trouble With Rape
April Ayers Lawson
April Ayers Lawson on rape, trauma, and the difficulty of speaking out about sexual abuse.
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
After
April Ayers Lawson
‘I again told him I wasn’t ready to have sex, and his only response was to lean in and kiss me. The hallway in which we walked seemed to be shrinking, closing in on us.’ – April Ayers Lawson on intimacy after sexual abuse.
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Abuse, Silence, and the Light That Virginia Woolf Switched On
April Ayers Lawson
When Virginia Woolf was thirteen, she was abused by her half-brother George Duckworth. No one believed her - not even her biographers. April Ayers Lawson on Woolf's abuse, and her own.