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Wide Eyed
Wide Eyed
Wide Eyed
Ebook146 pages2 hours

Wide Eyed

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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“A wonderfully eccentric and vibrant collection . . . Sometimes dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, always riveting” (Jill McCorkle, New York Times–bestselling author of Life After Life).
 
In “Hummingbird Moonshine,” a frustrated hunt for authentic religion in botanicas and science books culminates in a spiritual connection made with a hummingbird. In “Oceanic,” the narrator resolves to marry a manatee after a drunken pre-party for her best friend’s wedding. In “Tiles,” four vignettes about bloody accidents in tiled bathrooms intermingle with scenes from the author’s favorite scary movies.
 
In Trinie Dalton’s tweaked vision of reality, psychic communications between herself and Mick Jagger, The Flaming Lips, Marc Bolan, Lou Reed, and Pavement are daily occurrences. Animals also populate this book: beavers, hamsters, salamanders, black widows, owls, llamas, bats, and many more are characters who befriend the narrator. This collection of stories is told by a woman compelled to divulge her secrets, fantasies, and obsessions with native Californian animals, glam rock icons, and horror movies, among other things. With a setting rooted in urban Los Angeles but colored by mythic tales of beauty borrowed from medieval times, Shakespeare, and Grimm’s fairy tales, Wide Eyed makes the difficulties of surviving in a contemporary American city more palatable by showing the reader that magic and escape is always possible.
 
“A delightfully weird and disarming read.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Trinie Dalton’s voice is so charming in these stories and they fly right by, so it takes a little time to realize how deftly she is talking about death and sex and fear and love and fur and slumber parties, how lightly she touches upon heaviness, making an imprint so gentle you don’t know it’s there until later, when the story floats back up in your memory.” —Aimee Bender
 
“These charming stories vibrate with innocence and awe. Trinie Dalton is an effortless purveyor of wonder, strangeness, and love. She is a writer of high spirits and unguarded vision, and this debut collection is an absolute pleasure to read.” —Ben Marcus
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAkashic Books
Release dateOct 1, 2005
ISBN9781617750557
Wide Eyed

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Rating: 3.888888888888889 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a short story collection, but "stories" isn't really the best thing to call her writing. It was more like short musings...almost like a really stoned Livejournal-er, but not as bargain bin as that sounds. She's an interesting writer. Sometimes her analogies are a little too hippy for me, but she's funny and interesting. I should look her up to see if she's got anything else published.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hey, that's right... I'm a woman. I have very different sensibilities than a lot of my friends -- men. Seriously, I think I'd forgotten.Disillusionment, sensuality, nurturing, sleepovers with scary movies... maybe it's because I'm really trying to find myself again, but this, to me, was some wacky celebration of femininity -- the pity for weird stalkers, the incense, the spontaneous, overpowering emotional reactions..."You'll wake up from a dream with a physical craving to touch cat hair. Going into cat mode is usually fine and entertaining, nothing too psychological. But death and nighttime complicate cat mode.""There's something evil about a world in which I can think of a hundred jobs I'd like, and none of them will support me. Puppy rancher, wild mushroom collector, designer of fantasy postal stamps, incense critic.""I thought of my sleeping bag, covered with Snoopies and Belles, Snoopy's twin dog girlfriend, and how it should have me inside it. It should have been keeping me warm that very minute. Instead, a guy was pushing me against a towel rack."

Book preview

Wide Eyed - Trinie Dalton

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