The Pink Institution

( 1 )

Overview

Fiction. Beautiful and violent, sspare and ominous, this wholly original novel explodes mythologies of Southern femininity. Interweaving visceral, atmospheric prose with historical photographs, images and texts, THE PINK INSTITUTION traces four generationsof Mississippi women form their run-down, post-Civil War plantations to the modern-day trailer parks that house the youngest generations. As the impoverished decay of the Deep South expresses itself through their bloodlines, a new impression of Southern history ...

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More About This Book

Overview

Fiction. Beautiful and violent, sspare and ominous, this wholly original novel explodes mythologies of Southern femininity. Interweaving visceral, atmospheric prose with historical photographs, images and texts, THE PINK INSTITUTION traces four generationsof Mississippi women form their run-down, post-Civil War plantations to the modern-day trailer parks that house the youngest generations. As the impoverished decay of the Deep South expresses itself through their bloodlines, a new impression of Southern history and heritage emerges. The lyrical gravity and singular style of this unforgettable debut novel witll transform the reader in its wake.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Saterstrom's harrowing but gorgeous debut chronicles four generations of women in a tragically haunted Mississippi family. Divided into five sections and including old photographs and excerpts from the Confederate Ball Program Guide 1938, the book reveals decades of poverty, abuse and alcoholism. In the fractured first section, Saterstrom introduces Abella and her daughter, Azalea, in staccato, spare sentences; the moments described feel crucial but ransacked, since Saterstrom leaves large spaces between words that may have swallowed integral bits of information. Abella, "a woman [who] enjoyed socializing and thinking about restoration projects," is married to the abusive, alcoholic policeman Micajah. His beatings and likely sexual abuse (never fully revealed but strongly suggested) take their toll on their daughter, Azalea; she turns to the bottle and marries Willie, a lawyer distressingly like her father who later becomes a district judge. In section two, succinctly titled passages like "Vitamins," "Bracelets" and "Hitchhiker" convey in taut, unaffected language the horror Willie and Azalea's four daughters witness throughout their childhood. The girls narrowly survive their violent upbringing and have children themselves. Aza, who repeatedly attempted suicide as a child, begets the unnamed narrator of section four whose spooked but sensitive voice steers the book through some of its richest, most devastating passages. Brutal but also deeply lyrical, Saterstrom's beautiful novel paints a portrait of a family wracked by its own dysfunction and held fast by a place that has never fully recovered since the day the Civil War began-the day known, as the book tellingly reminds us, as "Ruination Day." (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Saterstrom's remarkably daring debut is not so much a novel as a catalog of events that eventually gives shape to four generations of Mississippi women in the post-Confederate South. In Part 1, we meet Abella, who marries Micajah, an abusive alcoholic. Their emotionally scarred daughter, Azalea, grows up to marry a drinker and has four children of her own Faryn, Aza, Trulie, and Ginger whose horrifying childhoods are recounted in Part 2. Of them, Aza's daughter, Penelope, dominates, relating the pain of her mother's substance abuse and suicide attempts as well as her own vexatious childhood. Imbued with madness, violence, and strong familial connections, Saterstrom's characters recall those of almost any Southern novel following Faulkner; the family's slide into alcoholism, poverty, and despair embodies the overall decay of the region. However, Saterstrom takes a fresh approach to the South's most beloved genre, framing the action with historical black-and-white photos and employing quotes from The Confederate Ball Program Guide (circa 1938) and other unidentified sources. More tellingly, she moves the plot forward through terse, aphoristic paragraphs sometimes just one to a page that give her novel the feel of a fable. Both touching and stylistically imaginative, this work is highly recommended. Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon Libs., Eugene Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781566891554
  • Publisher: Coffee House Press
  • Publication date: 4/1/2004
  • Pages: 140
  • Sales rank: 779,499
  • Product dimensions: 5.00 (w) x 7.50 (h) x 0.50 (d)

Meet the Author

Selah Saterstrom is the author of The Pink Institution, a debut novel praised across the country for "letting gusts of fresh, tart air blow into the old halls of Southern Gothic" (Believer). A Mississippi native, she is currently on the faculty of the University of Denver's Creative Writing Program.

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Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing 1 Customer Review

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 29, 2005

    Fascinating

    This book is very different from any fiction or nonfiction book I've ever read. 'The Pink Institution' is painful, strange, and beautiful. It is a quick read, but not an easy one. If you are looking for a nice, neat story where all is plainly spelled out, look elsewhere. 'The Pink Institution' is not that story. I recognize in this book the landscape of my home state, the legacy of all families, and even the ceiling of that vw. Everything, even the spaces between the lines and the chosen typefaces, is the deliberate work of the author. It is well-thought-out and purposely spare. Read this more than once and you still won't pick up on everything.

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