Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant: Stories

by Aurelie Sheehan

Book Overview

"It takes so long to see you are a slave," muses one character in these lyrical, sometimes bitingly funny chronicles of women breaking out of imposed roles.?"Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant "chronicles the dreams of misplaced waitresses, prostitutes and other working girls, the survival techniques of secretaries too smart to take orders. Using narrative elements poetically, Sheehan subverts the notion of linear storytelling, creating kaleidoscopic stories...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156478262X
• ISBN13: 9781564782625
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Non-linear, poetic, and arresting.

"It takes a long time to see you are a slave," muses one character in Aurelie Sheehan's debut collection, a line that succinctly captures the cumulative effect of her stories. These lyrical, sometimes bitingly funny chronicles of women breaking out of imposed roles feature misplaced waitresses, secretaries, prostitutes, and other working girls. In the title story, a woman yearns to be like Jack Kerouac, but is held back by a litany of rules teaching her to be a submissive girl, a "pansy." The main character in "Look at the Moon" is bored to distraction by her receptionist job but is still half under the influence of a Catholic upbringing when she hooks up with a flamboyant stranger and goes on a life-altering road trip with her. In "The Dove," a wealthy widow who was pressured by her family to marry a rich man spends her life fixated on an affair she had a week before her wedding. Women young and old, rich and poor, make soul-threatening sacrifices to adhere to societal or familial strictures. Love is passionately evoked here, as are the myths and illusions that sustain it. Non-linear, poetic, and arresting, Sheehan's storytelling skills ring with the authority of honesty, compassion, and experience.