There is very little bad
with Rachel Kushner’s collection of short fiction pieces, titled The Strange
Case of Rachel K., but there is also very little good about it either. At only
80 pages on very small pages, and from the kind of writer Kushner is, this book
can’t help but seem like a prelude to something else, and I question if that
figurative something is even good in the first place. A few years ago, I read
her breakthrough novel The Flamethrowers, and as time has passed, I completely
forgot what it was about except for a few spare details (60’s radicals,
sections in Europe, little else) and it just became another book on my shelf. And
sadly, this book looks to be going the same route. It is favorably compared to Bolano
on the front flap, but these three short pieces feel like Bolano-lite. It has
the same ideas in mind, but not the gumption to follow through with them. Since
there are only three pieces here, I feel I should talk about them all. The
first piece, “The Great Exception”, begins with the implied brutal death of an explorer
of the new world, and ends with the disillusioned relationship between a woman traveling
from Hawaii to Cuba and the man she meets there. The second, unrelated story, “Debouchment”,
unfolds over a few pages and consists of radio broadcasts, people talking in
bars, and eventual explosions. The title story, really the heart of the book,
shows the offspring of the couple in the first story, and the demise of Rachel
K. at the hands of those that want to be with her. I find it hard to discuss
this story more since we are given so little. If this is just a precursor to a
bigger novel, I might give it a chance, but as it is, I’m left thoroughly disappointed.
Rating: 3/5
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