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The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

aimee bender

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Bold, sexy, and daring, these stories portray a world twisted on its axis, an unconventional place that resembles nothing so much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. Bender's prose is glorious, musical, and colloquial, an anthology of the bizarre. In 'The Rememberer', a man undergoes reverse evolution -- from man to ape to salamander -- at which point a friend releases him into the sea, while in another story a woman gives birth to her mother. A grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?

Contents:
The rememberer --
Call my name --
What you left in the ditch --
The bowl --
Marzipan --
Quiet please --
Skinless --
Fugue --
Drunken Mimi --
Fell this girl --
The healer --
Loser --
Legacy --
Dreaming in Polish --
The ring --
The girl in the flamable skirt.

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 13,1998

This edition

Format
192 pages, Paperback
Published
August 17, 1999 by Anchor
ISBN
9780385492164
ASIN
0385492162
Language
English

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About the author

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aimee bender

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
34(34%)
4 stars
40(40%)
3 stars
26(26%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews All reviews
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Quiet_Opinion
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This book has been sitting on my shelf for twenty years. I wish I had read it twenty years ago when I was in my twenties. I think I would have appreciated it more back then. Bender has a lovely imagination. I suppose the stories were just left a little too open-ended for me. I wanted a little more depth and a little more closure.
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LegendisKey
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I dunno man, I kinda wish I could rate it 4.5. While the subject matter was not my total fave, lots of unrequited romance and parents dying, the stories were powerful enough that I had to physically put the book down and walk away for a few minutes. Her statement of fact one-liners were so so great. I really appreciated her writing style.
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Nwstam
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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The titular story was by far the best; unfortunately, most of the stories in this brief book read like filler.
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R0rack
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Disturbing, luminous, sad, erotic.

Aimee Bender is one of those authors who could write a dissertation on the invention of the phone book and I'd probably consider reading it. Even though I have to be in A Very Specific Mood for short stories, this was not difficult to melt into at all. Some of the stories were sexy; some were heartbreaking, some were luminous with a kind of darkly glittering magical realism. I loved each one, even when they made me shudder and look away. Delightful and fast read.
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MyraStivlen
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A summary:

1) wtf
2) wtf
3) k
4) why
5) ...
6) wow
7) wat
8) alright
9) well
10) yikes
11) interesting
12) womp womp
13) I liked this one
14) sure
15) hmm
16) but what about the backpack

1998 was a weird year, based on this book. Very odd, entertaining by being so bizarre, but to me not anything that will linger on in my mind.
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shivraj2005
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Beautiful imagery in the usual Bender fashion, but did not really speak to me at any point unfortunately. Probably would've given it 4/5 if I read it at 17.
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elga_tete
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Bender has a knack for the absurd, and for presenting it with an almost more absurd normality. Like, as if it is a bit weird that a woman would give birth to her own dead mother, but life goes on and she still makes great stew.

I like that.

At least that's true for the first part of the short-stories in this book. The second part is completely pointless, the third part okay, but not as good. And no, I have no idea if there is any deeper meaning behind the division of the book into three parts. There was none that I could see, and I didn't spend too much time thinking about it, because, as amusingly absurd the stort stories are, none of are really worth analyzing. That's ok, though. Good entertainment doesn't necessarily have to have a deeper meaning.
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jessalwayz
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I clearly went on a Bender bender in the last few weeks. I want to hang out with Aimee when I wake up and share all my random dreams because her stories remind me so much of them. I just LOVE her ability to capture me with completely out there vignettes that don't necessarily seem that out there to me.
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