In the sterile dormitories and on the quiet winter greens of an American university, a young woman named M - deals with the repercussions of a strange encounter with an angel, one that has left a large bruise on her forehead. Using rhythmic language, suffused with allusions to literature and art, Magdalena Zurawski recasts the bildungsroman as a vibrant and moving form.

As a writer, M - is breathless, desperate, and obsessive, questioning the mutations and directions of her words while writing with fevered immediacy. Was the event real or imagined? The bruise does not disappear, forcing M - to confront her own existential fears and her wavering desire to tell the story of her imagination. Winner of Ronald Sukenick Prize for Innovative Fiction The Bruise is a prize-winning novel of imperative voice and raw sensation. This is a marvelous debut.'-Brian Evenson Synopsis:īook Description Paperback. Quietly funny and benignly obsessive, there are no bells and whistles here, but simply carefully chosen words that render a life in beautifully exact and breathless terms. ' The Bruise manages to present all the loops and turns of a mind figuring out where it stands in relation to itself while staying playful and spare and crisp in all the right ways. But the book and writing are clever, one has to give Zurawski that. To hold one's breath waiting for the plot would not be good for one's health. Is this a female David Foster Wallace-men are allowed to do this lettered wallowing, or is it wandering? This reviewer is not sure the journey is worth the wait. The question is whether the reader cares enough to get that far. One realizes that the narrator's narcissism and intention for everyone in her life to notice her, to see her in her wounded state, is a metaphor for the narcissism and pathetic boredom of American culture in the 21st century. And here is where Zurawski gets to the reader. The other story: the young woman is visited by an angel, who bruises her.

The outside story: young woman goes to college life is boring she eats ham for dinner she has a female lover they have sex, which is boring she goes to writing workshops, writes a story. The event was also recorded on digital video tape.'This book is not for everyone.

An mp3 recording was made using an Audio-technical condenser Lo-Z AT835b microphone attached to a Marantz PMD660 Portable Solid State Recorder. For more photographs, visit the NWS Flickr page here.

The Bruise by Magdalena Zurawski