Cut by Catherine Lacey


Cut
Title : Cut
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Kindle , Hardcover , Paperback , Audiobook & More
Number of Pages : -
Publication : Published April 22, 2019

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Cut Reviews


  • Loli ☽

    “if you’re raised with an angry man in your house,
    there will always be an angry man in your house.
    you will find him even when he is not there.”

    i think “cut” might fly over people’s head if they are not attentive enough, if they are not willing to understand. sometimes there’s no man around you who’s actively harming/trapping you. but at the same time there’s always the ghost of a man following you around, the ghost of a social stigma that undermines you and makes you feel lost and incapable. i think “cut” shows exactly that. we are living in a man's world and it makes me feel as if i'm ripping in half sometimes. i get you, peggy. 4,5/5 ⭐️

  • Mikey Boy

    There’s a feeling of being trapped, stuck even, that is pervasive throughout the narrative of “Cut”. It reflects well the situations of the women themselves- a life and history chained by men, what men decide to do, the male gaze, their ghosts, their shadows. The way these women’s lives are always under scrutiny of the male gaze, the patriarchal one, is a realistic horror that settles like an unpleasant meal in your stomach. This is only further proven by the existence of Peggy’s sex announcer, an unwanted voyeurist that has stayed with Peggy as long as she has remembered. Even with no men around, there is still a man in Peggy’s house. The man.

    But isn’t that what makes a house? A home? A place of safety; the most dangerous place a woman can be.

    But what’s the second most dangerous place? The unknown. So invite him in. Better a monster than a ghost. A monster exists outside of your existence; a ghost is what you hold in yourself.

    This story excently portrays the massive gap in understanding between men and women. A looking through someone rather than at them, the male birthright to decide what and what they don’t want to see.

    Of course, they can never learn if women don’t speak up. But looking at their track record, who can blame them? Keeping quiet turns into a survival instinct; smiling and saying, showing that it’s all alright the “mature” thing to do (be “the bigger man”. Isn’t that ironic?).

    It’s this ingrained fear that causes Peggy to imagine her death at the hands of her make student, who asks to see her alone without explanation; that makes her smile at her husband and brush off his caustic comment. And Elena! God, I hope there’s an afterlife so Peggy and I- and Elena too, if she’d like can beat the sh!t out of her deceased husbands. (Though this is fictional, I don’t doubt the fact that it will be all too easy to find two men who have used their wives as cruelly and carelessly as them.)

    The world is built on weird little girls, and Tallulah similarly represents a possible future independent of all this. No doubt she will still have to wrangle with this corrosive influence, but I have no doubt she’ll be able to stick it to the man. You go kid!

    In conclusion: why do Men.

    P.S. Minor grammar mistake: “How easy it is to attempt to do one thing and effect the opposite.” should be “How easy it is to attempt to do one thing and affect the opposite.” Still a great story! Also, being aware that my personal experiences and worldview is limited, I would love to hear anyone who can relate to the struggles depicted in this story’s take on it.

  • anna

    Never know what to think about short stories i just read them on the toilet and think oh that was kinda fun. Anyways catherine lacey…she gets it….this is what makes us girls/woman moment/etc etc. I’m intrigued though I’m gonna look out for her novels🙏🏼

  • Ali

    I had to read it twice.

    Things I loved:

    1. How all women in the story (Tallulah, Peggy, the distressed student, and Elena) had a different experience with regards to the society's treatment of women. (I'm including the pretty privilege comment because there has always been more pressure on women to look pretty).

    2. Peggy's sex announcer. Peggy's internalization of a voice that objectifies her.

    3. The dream. I think it's the dream that pulls you out of the story and makes you realise that the cut is a metaphor for how her identity is being torn in two by the society.

    And, finally.

    3. The best part of the story for me was how Peggy handles her cut and how she feels like she's "coming apart" as a result of it.

    The cut is basically an (for the lack of a better word) unseemly problem that only she can fully understand. I think it's a good stand-in for struggles that women face, largely alone, before they hit mainstream cultural conversation. So, Peggy is left in a severely anxiety-inducing situation, with one other women's similar experience which she cannot relate to.

    Why do I think so? Forget seeing a doctor, right off the bat, the story tells us that Peggy hadn't even told her husband.

    …told her husband one morning after several weeks of pain.

    Her inability to explain her wound is matched with her husband's strange reply which was essentially, "Is this a woman thing?"

    The one line about her husband trying to make light of the situation and completely misreading her tone seals the scene. Peggy feels further isolated when he decides that he wouldn't have been that concerned about it, and that things like ripping in half just didn't happen to people. Throughout this exchange, he never asks her if it hurts and if yes, how badly does it hurt.

    If not a medical issue, I am sure there are other women who relate to this situation: you have a problem that is largely invisible to the point that if you claim that it's happening, you're quickly told that it (a) does not happen, and (b) is nothing to be worried about.

    The lack of available resources as well as the absence of the vocabulary needed to explain the problem is a problem on it's own. In the story, just like in real life, it only worsens Peggy's situation.

    Her final breakdown a reply to the voice that she has internalized, also feels like a reply to her husband. "Stop it. This isn't funny."

  • che

    if you’re raised with an angry man in your house,
    there will always be an angry man in your house.
    you will find him even when he is not there.
    and if one day you find that there is
    no angry man in your house—
    well, you will go find one and invite him in!

  • isabella

    amazing. brilliant. the muliebrity poem is heartbreaking. it captures what it's like to be a woman trapped in societal expectations, chained by the patriarchy, even internalized thoughts trying to dismiss one's self. it captures the fear and uneasiness; even if there is no actual man or person that is harming you, you still fear for what is about to come. i love this so much.

  • ky

    ugh men am i right

  • jiawen

    4.5/5

    oof this was intense. the different parts of this text are honestly quite fragmented and all over the place but in an "i-can't-escape" kind of way because you think you know what's going to happen and then the scene changes. i don't think lacey's writing style is for everyone but i personally kinda enjoyed how it worked well with the subject matter (womanhood). this piece feels bitter and hopeful yet ultimately exhausting at the same time, and i think it encapsulates the struggles of being a woman very well. there are some very stunning lines in this piece and i think that it also triggers this post-reading emotion stew that makes me feel depressed and numb and angry at the world at the same time because it feels like as a woman, there's no way out. but at the same time, i also think that it makes this piece a very cathartic read in some way.

  • David

    Well, I cannot lie, the opening line was certainly provocative: "There’s no good way to say it—Peggy woke up most mornings oddly sore, sore in the general region of her asshole."

    I kept thinking the rest of the story was going to turn into something I was going to love, but then it never did. It was perhaps a bit heavy-handed, and different sections kept pulling me in, but in the end it didn't come together in a satisfying way at all to me, so, meh, I guess.

  • Dove

    “if you’re raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house. you will find him even when he is not there. and if one day you find that there is no angry man your house- well, you will go find one and invite him in.”

    This piece is spilling with the most heartbreaking poetry.

  • mau

    fucking depressing:)

  • liz

    I'm gonna title this — 'I don't understand' because I don't.

    I have read eight reviews and discussions to understand the point of this story but none explained what I was searching for so here goes mine:

    I can't seem to connect the dots with the events that happened following peggy's discovery of a 'cut' that was making her life terribly miserable. Wasn't the author supposed to address a serious medical issue or was the entire thing just metaphorical for patriarchy ripping the identity of women? In that case, I really didn't get the point of mentioning how peggy was aggravated by her husband's baldness enough to mention — "the pit bull had probably been right to attack this skinhead guy." Perhaps she was trying to justify women judging men in their heads as it somehow contributes to equality? So this is uh feminism? I don't understand this.

    Moving to the other elements of the story, the elevator girl was trying to do something, the point of which was not comprehensible to me, and so was the interaction with the student who came for counseling. Elena and the poetry student's portrayal was done brilliantly, I might even calligraph the poem in my journals or something but again, most of it left me thinking — 'I don't understand.'

  • Lani Fernance

    ‘ “Maybe you’re ripping in half” he said, smiling, employing his male birthright to decide when something was or was not a joke. ‘

    This is a gut punch right up until the last paragraph, where it immediately falls off for me, introducing an idea that doesn’t get to be properly explored, it sortof feels tacked on. If the last paragraph wasn’t there it’d be 5 stars.

  • Courtney

    read at:
    https://www.newyorker.com/contributor...

    Really enjoyed her other piece.

    I liked the topics, style, and related to Peggy. Not sure what I was expecting but it just seemed to end… not bad, just wanted a little more.
    Elevator scenes were good.

  • mimi

    Catherine Lacey is slowly becoming one of my favorite authors as of late. The symbolism in "Pew" and the diction in "The Biography of X" led me to read Cut and it didn't disappoint. I didn't even realize that the angry man poem was written by Lacey, and its been one of my favorites for a while. Lacey does a wonderful job of writing men exactly right. No one is outwardly rude, or annoying, but every man mentioned is ignorant to everything about women, which hits home. Women will always feel a sense of pity, and invite the angry man in.

  • aisha

    "if you’re raised with an angry man in your house,
    there will always be an angry man in your house.
    you will find him even when he is not there.
    and if one day you find that there is
    no angry man in your house—
    well, you will go find one and invite him in!"

    “it’s been proven that the home is the most dangerous place for a woman to be. To which I say, sure, but what’s the second most dangerous place?”

  • ananya

    this was fun ngl. and im sure i missed quite a few things in between the lines, reading this for the first time (so i may re-read this since its very short) but this was still awesome and because its been weeks since i read a book, i just wanted to read something so i dont fall in a reading slump lol

  • Kamille T

    “If you’re raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house. You will find him even when he is not there.” No because like shut the fuck up… oh my god… going insane… (I enjoyed this)

  • Marta

    "if you’re raised with an angry man in your house,
    there will always be an angry man in your house.
    you will find him even when he is not there.
    and if one day you find that there is
    no angry man in your house—
    well, you will go find one and invite him in!"

  • Emma

    "if you’re raised with an angry man in your house,
    there will always be an angry man in your house.
    you will find him even when he is not there.
    and if one day you find that there is
    no angry man in your house—
    well, you will go find one and invite him in!"

  • Elizabeth

    I've read this three times (I keep going back for the imbedded poem about there always being an angry man in your house) and truly I just don't think that I get it. Like something's going on here that I can't quite pin down and I'm not sure if it's a fault with myself or with the work.

  • Valerie Marquez

    Short stories like this always leave something to be desired for me, but I enjoyed this short story nonetheless. Catherine Lacey's take on womanhood is uniquely personal, but I found myself relating to many parts throughout.

  • luisa💖

    “if you're raised with an angry man in your house,
    there will always be an angry man in your house.
    you will find him even when he is not there.
    and if one day you find that there is no angry man in your house-
    well, you will go find one and invite him in!”

  • roma

    "If you’re raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house. You will find him even when he is not there"

  • Cecilia Mould

    made me so so so sad but it was so good. i have to read more of this authors stuff. thinking about women and mothers and wives

  • Danisu

    jesus...

  • d.u.

    i love reading something and feeling simultaneously understood and confused