Black Market Babies

by Claire Phillips

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0966448804
• ISBN13: 9780966448801
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: 11th Hour
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Potent and original.

Phillips is a highly original and intense writer with a dark, cartoonish and scary/sexy vision. It takes a bit of work on the reader's part to adjust to her rythms but it's worth it. She is shockingly aggressive with metaphor. "On their hands was not a little finger but a chain link fence". "He heard the storms and famines in her voice". These are examples from memory, I probably didn't get them quite right. She has a brutally funny take on parent child relations, in fact all relations, and seems not to have a sentimental bone. One of the other readers compared her to Kathy Acker and I think that's right in terms of the radical dissasociations in her style and the rude view of social interaction: "What's your name?" "Sid." "Sid's a pretty limp name." I think she's less narcissistic than Acker though (may she rest in peace), and I also think of Laurence Sterne in terms of her freedom with novelistic convention-- rambling asides to the reader, non-sequiters, digressions from which we never quite return. Really she writes as though the novel weren't dead.

A novel which sparks passionate visions and lurid emotions.

Claire Phillips continues the tradition of the emotionalist writers such as Kathy Acker and Jeanette Winterson.Her words are barely able to contain the flow of irrational and emotional culture they both describe and reflect. Her creative use of the English language reveals a unique personal style which deals with issues of family life from a particularly sinister, yet optimistic perspective. Phillip's main courage lies in avoiding mundane rational structures and explanations of the non-rational. Instead she paints vivid and stark memories for us to share.Though her characters and storys are all striking, it is her fantastic renditions of passionate and frustrated love we all share (or deny) that are even more impressive than the strong impact of her apocryphal and extraordinary subjects.This is not a predictable novel for easy reading, there are far more questions than answers. But for the committed reader the enigmatic story and the pictures they paint in your head months after you put the book down and think you have forgotten about it, helps keep you human; isn't that one of the primary purposes of literature? This is literature to feel about, not just to think about or simply be entertained by, though it fulfills those needs as well. Its exemplary, exceptional and urgently needed. Thank you Claire Phillips!Marshall Weber 4/2/1999

A satricaly wicked examination of the role of mothering.

After reading Phillips' tourdeforce Black Market Babies, I knew that there was someone writing who saw how the absurdities of life can quickly become the reality that can defines our experineces .By following the lives of Heather, Lavender and Iris, in their search for the truth of their true parentage, the reader becomes involved in an examinaiton of the question of mothering and the function of truth in each of our lives. The quesiton emerges, Who is the real mother? and by the end of the book it does not matter as mothering can be found in other places and people. I laughed out loud and also cried myself to sleep.The writing was clean, pentrating and a bit nasty. The characters were deftly drawn, familiar yet unique in their realization. I felt like I knew these people, but perhaps wouldn't admitt it or return their calls. Thistle-Brune reminded me of myself and other women I have known who have faced the questions of mothering in a time when they knew it was not in them to have children-- A break with the tradtional role of women and assertion of a new definiton, scarey yet necessary. Ms. Phillips' insights into the intricies of modern life will earn her a place in literary history. She is able to embrace the ridiculous and still honor the tragedy of loss and the joy and power of love. It's a great read.