Title
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
Advisor's Name
John Dufresne
Advisor's Title
Committee Chair
Advisor's Name
Debra Dean
Advisor's Name
Bruce Harvey
Keywords
Teeth, In Vivo Veritas, Girl Scouts, The Rhythm, The Ghost of Diane
Date of Defense
3-6-2012
Abstract
TEETH AND OTHER TALES is a novella and a collection of short stories that explore the blurry lines between illusion and reality.
Teeth, the novella, is narrated backward in time, chronicling the life of Lucy from the age of sixty-five back to seventeen. After years of surviving an oppressive marriage, Lucy escapes her husband, but in doing so abandons her three children. In order to rationalize her decisions, Lucy uses selective memory to create her own reality to the extent that she comes to believe her own delusions.
The four short stories in the collection feature protagonists who create their own personal myths and struggle to protect their distorted truths, with mixed results. These struggles between the “real,” as conventionally defined, and personal fictions are complicated by elements of magical realism and surrealism. The stories were influenced by the short fiction of Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka and Haruki Murakami.
Recommended Citation
Handwerger, Alexandra M., "Teeth and Other Tales" (2012). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 572.
http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/572