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When I think of indelicacy, I think of slobbery, maximal, loud fumbling. But Amina Cain’s Indelicacy, which I carried around unopened in my bag for February 2020 and just read last week, isn’t badly named. Recklessness is certainly a concern of this slim and strange novel. Tactlessness abounds, as does irresponsibility and retaliation to whatever has just pissed you off. Still, this book could not have a lighter touch. It’s spare, its scenes are airy. It’s distinctly not dense. The experience of reading Indelicacy feels delicate in your hand. But if I tried to smash it on the floor, I bet it wouldn’t break.
Indelicacy has tensile strength. The protagonist—an art gallery janitor who marries rich and then spends her time feeling “like a giant ear”—is not a moderate person. She oscillates between foreboding silence and insult comedy. The arcs of this story, even up to the treacherous climax, seem to exist like hanging lines to connect a series of ruptures, where Vitória tells disappointing men-in-power exactly what she thinks of them. She does not disappoint.
Reading Indelicacy imparts this sensation of biting your tongue, biting your tongue, biting your tongue, biting your tongue, and then unleashing it to say exactly whatever you were secretly screaming to yourself. There’s no middle path of reasonable, mitigated expression. Indelicacy seems like a rejection of a reasonable response. Which, I agree. The middle path is always there for us, but calming down is completely boring.
PLUS! The author, Amina Cain herself, recommends her very own favorite Purse Book:
I'm going to recommend Marie NDiaye's Self-Portrait in Green. At 100 pages, it fits perfectly into a purse (or even a big pocket) and is one of the most mysterious, spectral, appealing and uncategorizable books I've ever read.
& Indelicacy was the first official crew read for the Purse Book Gals-On-The-Go Book Club. Here’s what a couple of the crew thought of Indelicacy:
“minimalist and the right amount of mean” - H. C. who read Indelicacy on an airplane !
“I’d feel lucky if the main character was my work friend.” - Mira P.
“My favorite insult is where she tells two writers that they are male worms in a toilet.” - Mac A.
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