Radium Girls by Amanda Gowin


Radium Girls
Title : Radium Girls
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0692211683
ISBN-10 : 9780692211687
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 202
Publication : First published May 15, 2014

Love. Death. Addiction. Twins. Cicadas. Strippers. Murderers. Children. Castles. Zombies. Pomeranians. Silver limbs. Mental institutions. Trailer parks. Time travel. Appalachia. Conversations. Memories. Lies.

Table of Contents:
THE TRUTH
HOLLOW CREATURES
THE CABBAGE MUSE
TEETOTALER
THE WORLD WAS CLOCKS
TINDER BOX
FEVER
GILDED BONES
TROTLINES
ASYMMETRY
A Brief Conversation While Buying a Drink in Checkers Lounge, Eight Years Coming
SHORT TENDON
THE OLD UNIVERSE
THE PINK MANATEE
PILFERING LIFE


Radium Girls Reviews


  • Brittney

    I’m not even sure what I read?

  • Rodney

    This​ ​collection​ ​was​ ​poetic,​ ​dark​ ​and​ ​surreal,​ ​all​ ​things​ ​I​ ​look​ ​for​ ​and​ ​enjoy.​ ​​​The​ ​prose​ ​was​ ​a highlight, the​​ ​​images​​ ​​and​​ ​​moods​​ ​​it​ ​created​ ​were​​ ​​dream-like.​ ​There​ ​were​ ​many​ ​passages that​ ​were​ ​striking​ ​and​ ​beautiful.​ ​​However,​ ​it​ ​is​ ​a​ ​tough​ ​one​ ​to​ ​review.​ ​There​ ​were​ ​times​ ​when​ ​it felt​ ​a​ ​little​ ​unfocused.​ ​I​ ​am​ ​conflicted,​ ​but​ ​will certainly​ ​be​ ​looking​ ​for​ ​more​ ​from​ ​the​ ​author.​ ​3.5​ ​rounded​ ​to 4​ ​stars.
    Standout​ ​pieces​ ​below:
    The​ ​Cabbage​ ​Muse
    The​ ​World​ ​Was​ ​Clocks
    Asymmetry
    A​ ​Brief​ ​Conversation​ ​While​ ​Buying​ ​a​ ​Drink​ ​in​ ​Checkers​ ​Lounge,​ ​Eight​ ​Years​ ​Coming
    The​ ​Pink​ ​Manatee

  • Benoit Lelièvre

    This book read itself, really. The main story "The Pink Manatee" takes more than half of the collection and once I started it, I didn't close the book until I reached the last page. The stories of Amanda Gowin were hit and miss for me. Some of them I liked a lot like "Fever" and "Gilded Bones", but I enjoyed RADIUM GIRLS for one particular reason: these are really feminine genre stories. Gowin's characters are thoroughly feminine, they're not girls masquerading as boys, doing boyish stuff and I thought it gave a fresh outlook on genre fiction and the possibilities that open up once you start thinking outside the box. My interest in RADIUM GIRLS was rather clinical not than leisurely, but Amanda Gowin has a unique thing going. Well worth checking out.

  • Craig Wallwork

    Radium Girls is the debut collection of shorts from Amanda Gowin. That needed saying first off, because as soon as you begin this book, you slowly forget it’s a collection of stories, and it becomes more a journey through amazingly crafted lives that are connected by a profound need to be coupled. And I don’t mean “coupled” in a romantic way either, but more in a need to be connected to another person - emotionally, spiritually, sexually, or hopelessly. This not Mills and Boon. There is no place in these pages for Zooey Deschanel acting all cutesy and innocent. This is life laid out in its raw and natural state. In these pages, Gowin has stripped away the skin and flesh of everything we have known and exposed the fetid marrow of life that runs through us all.

    “Lies are more plausible in a shadowless world.”

    There are 15 stories in total, which for a short story collection doesn’t seem much. But a large chunk of that is spent on the novella Pink Manatee. This is the jewel in the crown and my favourite in the collection. It tells the story of Bridget, a sort of ACME witch come spiritual guider for many of the patients in a mental institution, where she too is residing and receiving treatment. Bridget buries many things, likes dolls for the woman who lost her child, or poetry for the man with the stammer. These are acts born of hope. Bridget believes that there is no harm with offering hope, or herself, it makes someone’s life more bearable. And it’s this self-sacrifice that extends beyond the perimeter walls of the institution to Eddie, her ex-room mate’s brother. Eddie likes to pick Bridget up on day release in his El Camino and drive into the suburban belly of the underworld to do some dodgy deals. Eddie has a girlfriend. Eddie is bad. But beholden by her own beliefs, this moment of freedom and adventure is the only consent Bridget needs to be the accomplice, and bed-partner. When Eddie needs to sell some stolen radios and pulls Bridget along for the ride, she meets a fence called Max, part Street Car Brando and part David in The Lost Boys. If you want love, then here it is, but be warned, this not conventional. All schematics, blueprints and templates have been ripped up. And this is where Gowin shines. Max and Bridget’s relationship is damaged, desperate, animal and yet perfect in construction. Blistering and slick dialogue pierces through the two, and that vulnerable edge we all have is the thread that pulls this all together. The detail that Gowin puts into these scenes is nothing sort of inspiring. As a writer, I felt myself sweating, and contracting, and wishing for one moment I could see the world and all its little flaws through Gowin’s eyes.

    “Looking into his palm is reading MAD magazine – a gorgeous combination of lies, satire, and flexible half-truths; on every whorl of sandpaper callous Eddie is etched.”

    But the real genius of Pink Manatee is the way Gowin has balanced that torrid and unpredictable world beyond the institution with the procedural, controlled, and at times, more desperate world within. Beautifully flawed characters revolve around Bridget, and it’s sometimes within these moments you find true sadness. Amy, Gerald, Charlotte, these are real people. These stories exists. And what cleaves is not the want for the cracks to heal in the lives of all these people, but for you to crawl down each to see how deep they go. There are some really tender and magical moments within the institution that offset the dark, sweltering intensity of the outside world. Here we see the desperation of the mind played out, and the family union of broken characters.

    Pink Manatee could easily have been released as a book, but the brood spawned by Gowin’s mind serve as reminders there is much more from Gowin in the future. The shorter pieces are dream-like in construction, some more abstract, some more poetic in design. There are zombies, twins, addicts, Pomeranians, the moon, clocks and all the tiny pieces of life we overlook. Gowin is the tornado, lifting the flotsam of society and spinning it around and around until it lands just South of Kansas where magic and colour is just beyond their reach. There is no yellow brick road in Gowin’s world, only the brittle shards of broken dreams to walk upon. It’s a sad, and at times, a difficult journey to undertake, but I can promise you this, by the end you’ll want to live every step over and over again.

  • Boden Steiner

    Grandmothers with new metal hands, the mental symmetry of twins and time, the complications of zombies, navigating a day pass, sex and boredom at the end of the world.

    There is a pervasive authenticity in the characters laced throughout Amanda Gowin’s debut collection, RADIUM GIRLS. They spark to life in their own myths, create the fictions necessary to experience their world. They accept damage, or at least choose to find the good and stumble through it, find their way despite all the crazy around them.

    Most of the stories in the collection are staccato renditions of this, short bright bursts of character and story. It all works, but never so well, and never so bright as in the longer novella, the noir-charged heater, The Pink Manatee, where Gowin takes the time to build upon her characters and let them take over.

    I think Gowin called The Pink Manatee something like unintentional noir, or her own version of what that might be in her sensibility. Certainly its own thing, not unlike how Caitlin R. Kiernan writes her own brand of horror. Whatever it is, you can hear the soundtrack playing through a one speaker car radio, the flip-side of The Handsome Family’s main title song from True Detective as sung by Patsy Cline or Wanda Jackson.

    If this is noir, it’s noir we seldom see, told through a feminine lens. It’s not noir for the POV character, Bridget; it’s just life, something she stumbles into, and life isn’t a novel or a film, but maybe, sometimes it feels like it could be if she squints through the sun and imagines. She has seen enough movies to feel the personal film score coloring a situation, and to wish she knew all the right things to do and say in her scene. And this is the trick Gowin sews into the story: life can accidentally play like a noir film.

    Words said and unsaid, the scenes vibrate with sweaty skin and summer heat. The dialogues steam off the page, recalling all the classic smoke and fire from the iconic noirs in our mental catalog. Unknown to Bridget, she does say and do those perfect filmic things, and it all rings true. The scenes between Bridget and her men have an energy, a sexuality never completely overt, but implied and catalogued in every small gesture—the proximity of a foot, the height of a chair, desire mixed with intent. It’s the same yearning that, in those classic stories, has table plates swept to the floor and chairs thrown through windows. As a reader, you are constantly wondering if and when, but almost more, you wonder what the fallout might be.

    That fallout is the thing. It’s inevitable in these triangles, and after all, Bridget is institutionalized, maybe a little crazy, or more crazy than most, and possibly crazy in a way we can only guess. It’s a hidden danger—the possibility of possibility. It’s that hook of imagination that pulls everything along and invests the reader in the fate of these characters. It’s Gowin writing with a spade in her hand, just working in the garden, but maybe something else, something unexpected and dangerous.

    Radium Girls is an exceptional debut of stories and The Pink Manatee needs to be read--hopefully by the right readers, and especially by those that are willing to find their noir in unexpected places. Don’t miss this one—and please, beg Amanda Gowin to write a novel.

    *Should also be noted, this is another beautiful book designed by Michael Gonzalez and Thunderdome Press. A pleasing object with clever headers and spot art. Truly worth picking up in print.

  • Gordon

    This is my favorite thing I’ve read all year. Together, these stories really showcase Gowin’s exquisite gifts, such as seeing everyday objects and experiences through new or naïve eyes. Her characters fetishize them, whether they’re hands or feet or mirrors or clocks or dolls, Frankensteining these “monsters” together like she mentions in her introduction. Perhaps that’s why the film May kept triggering for me while reading (but scored with Tori Amos songs). Twins populate several of these stories, embodying one of its recurring themes of incomplete people seeking out their missing jigsawed pieces that some might call a soul mate. Or maybe it’s just a body (pulse optional), or even a cigarette.

    The language is lyrical and often awe-inspiring—“earthy” is the best adjective I can come up with—surely a product of the author’s Appalachian roots. That said, my one criticism is a tendency to obfuscate the settings at first. I had to reread many of the stories’ opening pages several times just to ground myself in where and whom I was. It’s clever, for sure, and sometimes exceedingly so. One you’re in, though, the writing flows very well. She makes so many uncommon connections in her metaphors and similes that brought a grin to my face even when I didn’t fully understand them, resonating nonetheless with something resembling the intended feeling or imagery. We all know the most dangerous Girls are the most fun to hang out with.

  • Mercedes Yardley

    Radium Girls by Amanda Gowin (not to be confused with books on the radium factory workers) is a beautiful, surreal collection of short stories. Each tale oozes with voice and a touch of the bizarre. The Pink Manatee, the longest story in the collection, is absolutely divine. Some of the stories are quite experimental and might not be to everybody's taste, but oh, it was to mine. Keep an eye out for repeating themes, such as twins. Gowin's Radium Girls is a gem.

  • Sean Ferguson

    "A unique voice" gets thrown around a lot, but when you're crossing zombies, llamas, and a poetic mind, you can't really get more unique. Radium Girls is a collection of stories and a novella bundled together with coloring book flare, in yet, another amazing Thunderdome Press production.

    You know at the end of the first Matrix movie, when good old Keanu does that thing, where he straightens out his hand to get a little bit more distance, and he chokes Mister Smith with his fingertips? That face that Smith makes, with the gagging noise, that happened to me at the end of Radium Girls' first piece, but in a good way. At first you're all, "Oh, it's a play with two of my favorite writerly ladies waxing poetic about Rapunzel, and hair, and bugs, and such." And then the last few notes just straighten their hand out and say hello to your throat. You see what's been going on all along, and all you can do is react.

    But in a good way.

    And that's kind of how the rest of the book goes from there on out. The writing is sharp, and clever, and tight, and all of the other adjectives that you wish all of the books you buy would have.

    I mean, I gave this bad bitch 5 Stars. So, you know, read it.

  • Caleb Ross

    (click the image below to watch the video review)


    video book review of Radium Girls by Amanda Gowin


    This makes two videos in a row in which I wear a Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds shirt and drink Sexy Betty Imperial Stout. No, I’m not a slob drunk; I simply recorded two videos in a row.

    Amanda Gowin’s Radium Girls is all sorts of interesting. It’s weird, it’s heartfelt, it’s wavering, it’s beautiful, it’s poetic, and it’s a bunch of other things I can’t think of right now because I’m tired.

    You should buy this book!


    YouTubeSubscribe

  • Morey

    I loved every second of reading this book. I listen to a lot of female artists music-wise but don't generally read them, I find some sort of romantic drek usually creeps into what at first seems like an interesting read. Not in the stories of Radium Girls though. There is some romance but the characters are strong and not aimlessly indulgent emotionally. I fucking love The Pink Manatee, It is truly one of my favorite stories of all time and I'm an old dude who's read a lot. Amanda is a unique and brilliant literary voice. More please.

  • Patrick Pujolas

    Phenomenal in its originality. I can't think of a single author, male or female, dead or alive, to compare with Amanda Gowin. And that's probably the highest compliment I give to any writer. The voice feels original, the stories feel original. Some pieces here resonated more strongly than others, and there were times when the story gets so bizarre, I had to re-read sections. But those are subjective calls, not technical flaws. The longest piece here, "The Pink Manatee" (almost novella length), is one of the best I've read in a long, long time. Highly recommend.

  • Amanda Gowin

    I'm giving it five stars because I worked really hard on it and my manatee drawing is brilliant.

  • Natasha

    Bought the wrong book

    I bought this thinking it was another book of the same name. Took awhile to realise it was not. Some stories were quirky. But most were just all over the place. Do check the blurb before purchasing- it may not be what you expect.

  • Josh Karaczewski

    A singular voice telling stories of characters on the edge of madness, both wary and attracted to those ready to push them over. Gowin's writing is at times maddeningly elusive (in a good way), and then raw in its truthfulness, with most stories deserving multiple readings. But then despite all of the content of coiled violence, despair, anxiety, and dangerous desire, the book manages to be charming as hell. Now I'm curious to see what she does in her promised novel.

  • Richard Thomas

    Amanda Gowin is a unique voice—gritty and raw, surreal and poetic, but always powerful, one story on the surface, another just under your skin. This is a fantastic collection of stories.

  • Booked podcast

    Hear the full review on our website:
    http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2014/06/...

  • Linda Benedict

    An important story, glad it was told. I fear corporations aren't any better now. The writing struck me as overly dramatic. I listened to the audio book and the reader was even more dramatic.

  • Lawren DiDonna

    Heartbreaking and enlightening. Really has left me speechless and sad.

  • julie

    Before Erin Brockovitch, before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, before Three Mile Island... and AFTER... these ladies and girls held the key and led the way.

  • KBWalk

    Loved - saw the play as well

  • Pam Desjardine she-her

    It was with horrid fascination that I kept reading this because I was desperate to hear if they ever resolved their dilemma.

  • Jill Voerste

    Eye opening on how women were so dismissed. Interesting to see how chemicals take so long to know are unsafe.

  • Summer

    Heartbreaking book, but very well written.