Tess Fragoulis
1997 Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver
Stories
to Hide from Your Mother, a slim volume of stories by Anglo-Greek-Montrealer
Tess Fragoulis, is a truly hysterical collection: focusing on women, and containing
both the horror and hilarity the term denotes. The stories to hide form one's mother
could easily refer to the collection itself - after all, I'm not sure I want to share
stories about menstrual sex, fantasies over sixteen-year-old boys, tattoos of penises,
and bisexual flirtations (to name a few taboo subjects) with my mom - but more importantly,
they refer to the ways women, especially, must escape being consumed by our mothers.Many of these stories treat of a common subject: often, knowing women seducing men with little apparent subjectivity, while hiding, in some sense or another, from monstrous mothers. Like contemporary ogresses, these mothers eat their sons, daughters, or husbands' lovers in a sense more horrific than the literal anthropophagia of Grimm folk tales. These mothers ferret out secrets, understanding the beleaguered characters too little, too well, or both.
These hidden stories range in tone from dark comedy to more overtly painful psychodrama. In the hilarious opening "Exhortations," a nakedly frank plea to an unnamed granting agency, she writes that at the age of 21, "...I spent my days writing autobiographical sketches with loosely disguised characters, ultimately revealing the ordinariness of my life to the world." These short stories, however, while grounded in the ordinariness of women, men, and mothers in various configurations, burrow beneath the ordinary, revealing a subterranean geographies of ugly emotions demarcated by tributaries of body fluids.
Fragoulis' quiver holds many arrows, all of which find their mark. Particular gems include "Ankle-Deep in Moonwater," a brilliantly constructed story presented in episodes of reverse order, exploring a young girl's mute testimony to heinous betrayals on the part of a stranger and a family who are strangers. Another, "Horace Likes Demons," treats of a fairly hackneyed subject - struggling with one's inner demons - with great originality and wit. My own favorite, "Tatterdemalion Bride," presents the account of a wedding manqué narrated by the shifting points of view of its participants, each worse-tempered and more vituperative than the last. From the fashion stand-off between a great aunt and godmother on opposite sides of the aisle to the unveiling of the tattooed bride, Fragoulis' prose captures the petty malice underlying family relations in times of great stress occasioned by rituals requiring a façade of joy.
These collected stories, linked as they are by common themes of sex, fluids, eating, and the horrors preceding, during, and following intimacy, are best read sequentially (though not in one sitting), allowing the reader to appreciate Fragoulis' transitions between stories. Take a look, for example, at the end of "A Taste for Meat" ("Raw, juicy, freshly slaughtered") and the beginning of "Day Two Lasts Twenty-Four Hours" ("Domina ate her young because she was depressed and they wouldn't stop screaming.") As she organized the book, Fragoulis thought of how songs were ordered in her favorite CDs (She made"Tatterdemalion Bride" the pop single) - a device that clearly adds to the flow of this collection.
Aptly, for a collection in which consumption of one type or another figures so prominently, Fragoulis' prose is savory. Reading this collection is like gulping down the spoken words of an erudite vixen. Her style is tonic - like the muscular contractions of swallowing or orgasm, like the vigor of a fine smart drink going down, like a musical phrase sliding into the ear - thick, smooth, and liquid.
With these word-baited mousetraps of stories, Fragoulis has captured the Zeitgeist of young urban womanhood and displayed it like a trophy for even mothers to see.
Lauraine Leblanc
Photo © Linda Dawn Hammond