Lungs Full of Noise

I'm not sure how to describe this book. I am tempted to compare it to Margaret Atwood's short stories and prose fiction, in its focus on the grotesqueries, metaphors and realities of a type of female life made manifest. But Mellas breaks open even the metaphors' metaphors. Her women are boxes within boxes with cocoons within berries and fruits and bugs. She doesn't shy from making manifest emotional pain as physical pain (in the first story of the volume, ice skaters screw the blades directly to their feet). Rape, fear, anger, love, are all broken into component parts and digested in ways that are both surreal and viscerally real. I don't know if I liked the book, but I'm glad I read it.