Bibliograph

Nostalgia has ruined my life, fiction, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

Type

Label

Nostalgia has ruined my life, fiction, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

Nostalgia has ruined my life

Responsibility statement

Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

Sub title

fiction

Summary

'From the discomfort of my own home I buy dresses, look up recipes, do online surveys.' In Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life, an unnamed young woman in her late twenties navigates unemployment, boredom, chronic illness and online dating. Her activities are banal, applying for jobs, looking up horoscopes, managing depression, going on Tinder dates. 'I want to tell someone I love them but there is no one to tell,' she says. 'Except my sister maybe. I want to pick blackberries on a farm and then die.' She observes the ambiguities of social interactions, the absurd intimacies of sex and the indignity of everyday events, with a skepticism about the possibility of genuine emotion, or enlightenment. Like life, things are just unfolding, and sometimes, like life, they don't actually get better. Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle's novella-in-fragments blends artifice with sincerity, is darkly funny, and alive to the incongruous performance that constitutes getting by

Classification