![]() Kennedy's best work, these stories are simple and undramatic, yet subtly provocative. The women have devoted their young adulthood to caring for their widowed father with his death, Doris and Frannie set out on a road trip from Virginia to Arizona. Apropos to the title, the book is set in the 1960s and follows two unmarried sisters in their thirties. One, a philosophy student obsessed with Nietzsche, compares her old life to the state of Ohio: "flat, but with a fast, sparkling river of doubt running through it." The second, an aimless young woman on the fringes of the antiwar movement, examines her addiction to a man who compulsively creates bizarre theories about aliens to buffer himself against life. Stripping was followed by Kennedys debut novel, Spinsters. ![]() Both "The Black Forest" and "UFOs" are about young women forced to stop short and be painfully honest about the directions they've chosen. ![]() Although some of these tales are weakened by lethargic pacing, others reveal a rare talent for tussling with life's disquieting problems. From a teen-ager who wants a glimpse of Elvis Presley's toilet to a woman who exists in near-total silence, each of the main characters in "Stripping" presents a different interpretation of the collection's title in story after story, we find them shedding unconscious layers of memories, rituals and beliefs. ![]() In her first collection of short stories, Pagan Kennedy examines a variety of situations in the lives of female characters - all of which provoke moments of life-changing awareness, and some of which are prompted by the most unlikely circumstances. SHORT STORIES STRIPPING And Other Stories.By Pagan Kennedy.High Risk/Serpent's Tail, paper, $10.99. ![]()
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