Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Major/Program

Creative Writing

First Advisor's Name

Lynne Barrett

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Debra Dean

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Michael Gillespie

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

fiction

Date of Defense

3-16-2023

Abstract

RELATIVE ANATOMY is a short story collection that draws on the uncanny and the grotesque to show characters torn between obsessions and obligations, seeking their own paths.

As in Shirley Jackson's “The Haunting of Hill House”, seemingly trustworthy narrators find their obsessions overwhelming reality. In “Rot" a medical student becomes willing to do anything to get her rivals disqualified, while the protagonist in "Pears from Singapore" assumes she has become immaculately pregnant.

Some stories, like those in George Saunders' “The Tenth of December”, use off-kilter worlds to compel characters to face who they really are. In “Oracle," an epileptic high school outcast who has visions during seizures, is shown an outcome compelling him to save the school bully, while an elderly theme park CEO in "Beyond the Curtain's Edge" is forced to reckon with his mistakes in a place where imagination and beauty are supposed to reign.


Identifier

FIDC011070

Included in

Fiction Commons

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