cover image Napoleon's Mare

Napoleon's Mare

Lou Robinson. F2c, $10.95 (177pp) ISBN 978-0-932511-48-5

The novella and prose poems making up this volume gush forth in a stream of consciousness, leaving powerful and disturbing visions in their wake. The book is a series of women's tales, histories and memories, disparate yet connected through common ideas and themes, including men's violence against women, women's violence against men in revenge, and lesbian sexuality. Persistent images pop up again and again: a woman who is in a body cast because she was beaten by a man; a leopard-skin muff, given by a woman to her lover, that learns to speak and communicates sorrowful little messages. These images and their surrounding stories gain strength each time Robinson reuses and retells them, twisting them about to achieve new perspectives. But for all the arresting imagery, there is not enough continuous substance; the book is a series of vague, stylized visions, ultimately failing to hold the reader. Robinson co-edited Resurgent: New Writing by Women. (Dec.)