Sea, Poison

ISBN: 0811239519

Author: Beilin, Caren

Condition: New

A darkly funny, electrifying tale of polyamory, illness, health-care malfeasance, and gynecological crime mixed with Oulipian madnessCumin Baleen is a forty-one-year-old writer living in Philadelphia-this city of hospitals-who works at the upscale grocery Sea & Poison and is navigating the onset of an autoimmune condition. To start a medication that may help, an eye exam is required and this leads to a nightmarish laser eye surgery. The laser shoots into her brain, making her language spare and her sentences clause-less, a vexing constraint that stalls her book on gynecological malpractice: she wants others, in the realm of our for-profit medical industry that renders the Hippocratic Oath its opposite, to see poison.Meanwhile, Cumin is kicked out of her boyfriend Maris studio after he falls for Janine, their landlord, and starts renting a closet in Marons bedroom-polyamorous Maron who is hooking up with Alix, whom Cumin lusts after. Disheveled from medicines and medical scams, Cumin declares, I dont know what to say, Im saying I have a cracked appearance. Its not a pity party, its a character sketch. Insofar as youll need to be looking at me, that your mind should fill me up with its own swaying cognitive and toxic reeds if we are to do this, your imagination should touch me with its ridiculous poison.Caren Beilins hypnotic and fractured story is at once an homage to Shusaku Endos terrifying novel of human vivisection The Sea and Poison and the spirit of OuLipo, the pioneering French writing group that sought new literary potential through constraints.