The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman

Stories

Fiction & Literature, Literary
Cover of the book The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman by Courtney E. Morgan, University of Alabama Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Courtney E. Morgan ISBN: 9781573668705
Publisher: University of Alabama Press Publication: March 7, 2017
Imprint: Fiction Collective 2 Language: English
Author: Courtney E. Morgan
ISBN: 9781573668705
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Publication: March 7, 2017
Imprint: Fiction Collective 2
Language: English

The nineteen stories in The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman track the splintered trajectory of the title character, tracing a chicken-scratch line of psychosexual development from childhood to old age.

In unfamiliar and sometimes bizarre narrative turns, the stories in Courtney E. Morgan’s The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman traverse the gamut of female/human experience, both grounded in reality and in the irreal. Two schoolgirls culminate their sexual exploration in a surreal act of cannibalism. A sister molds her dead brother’s body into a bird. A woman gives birth to balls of twine and fur (among other things). A sex worker engages a version of herself in a brothel of prostituted body parts.
 
Morgan tears apart a host of archetypes and tropes of femininity—dismembering them, skinning them, and then draping them one by one over her characters like fur coats—revealing them as ill-fitting, sometimes comedic, sometimes monstrous, and always insufficient, masks. Along with these skins of the cultural “feminine,” the collection tries on an array of genres—dissecting, mutating, and breeding them together—from fairy tale to horror, surrealism to confessional (non)fiction, and erotica to (un)creation myth.
 
The book weaves around questions of sexuality, identity, and subjectivity. Mutability, instability, and liminality are foregrounded, both in content and form, character and language—blurring the lines between birth and death, death and sex, tugging at the transitional spaces of adolescence and gestation. Even as its treatment is essentialized, gender is muddied and obscured. Morgan shows off her linguistic range in this collection, from sharp-as-nails prose to lyrical moments of poetic reach—probing the extremes of the human condition through both narrative line and language itself.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The nineteen stories in The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman track the splintered trajectory of the title character, tracing a chicken-scratch line of psychosexual development from childhood to old age.

In unfamiliar and sometimes bizarre narrative turns, the stories in Courtney E. Morgan’s The Seven Autopsies of Nora Hanneman traverse the gamut of female/human experience, both grounded in reality and in the irreal. Two schoolgirls culminate their sexual exploration in a surreal act of cannibalism. A sister molds her dead brother’s body into a bird. A woman gives birth to balls of twine and fur (among other things). A sex worker engages a version of herself in a brothel of prostituted body parts.
 
Morgan tears apart a host of archetypes and tropes of femininity—dismembering them, skinning them, and then draping them one by one over her characters like fur coats—revealing them as ill-fitting, sometimes comedic, sometimes monstrous, and always insufficient, masks. Along with these skins of the cultural “feminine,” the collection tries on an array of genres—dissecting, mutating, and breeding them together—from fairy tale to horror, surrealism to confessional (non)fiction, and erotica to (un)creation myth.
 
The book weaves around questions of sexuality, identity, and subjectivity. Mutability, instability, and liminality are foregrounded, both in content and form, character and language—blurring the lines between birth and death, death and sex, tugging at the transitional spaces of adolescence and gestation. Even as its treatment is essentialized, gender is muddied and obscured. Morgan shows off her linguistic range in this collection, from sharp-as-nails prose to lyrical moments of poetic reach—probing the extremes of the human condition through both narrative line and language itself.

More books from University of Alabama Press

Cover of the book Jeffrey Introduces Thirteen More Southern Ghosts by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Race and Culture in New Orleans Stories by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Head Masters by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941–1942 by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Transatlantic Scots by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Caribbean Paleodemography by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Hugo Black by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book New Lights in the Valley by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book From the Modernist Annex by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book After Strange Texts by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Constance Baker Motley by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book The Women of Provincetown, 1915-1922 by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book From Conciliation to Conquest by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Hitting A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick by Courtney E. Morgan
Cover of the book Light on the Path by Courtney E. Morgan
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy