An Occasional History

Fiction. Women's Studies. Laura Davenport's poetic and harrowing AN OCCASIONAL HISTORY investigates how language and a person's place within it come to be defined in the context of an abusive relationship--one whose terrible violence is ever so gradually revealed, as layers of language and forgetting are progressively peeled away. Through five sections of differing form, in which romance novels, the OED, and etymological histories play prominent roles, we approach the core of knowledge step...