Pretty Ugly

[No place stated. United Kingdom?]: Rough Trade Books, 2024. First ed. (stated). Small octavo in mutli-color predominantly gree wraps; 217p Very fine; as new. Paperback. ISBN: 9781914236433, 1914236432

"Contradictions (both real and apparent), oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges--this is the kind of material that makes a life, and is the kind of material that, in fiction, one is never quite sure of. With Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn reminds us again that she is a master of just such stuff, presenting ambiguity and complication as the essence of the storyteller's endeavour. The sheer force of life that Gunn is able to load these stories up with is both testament to her unrivalled skill and an exercise in what she describes as 'reading and writing ugly', in order to pursue the deeper truths that lie at the heart of both the human imagination and human rationality. So here we have all the strange and seemingly impossible dualities that make up real life--and pretty ugly it can be, as well as beautiful, hopeful, bleak, difficult, exhilarating. But never, ever dull." —Publisher. // Contents: Blood knowledge. Praxis, or Why Joan Collins is important. Transgression. Dangerous dog. Flight path. Mirror, mirror. King Country. "It's lonely being a young man sent abroad to fight," she said. The round pool. Mam's tables. Poor beasts. Dreede. All gone. Afterword: Night scented stock. // “Kirsty Gunn (born 1960, New Zealand) is a novelist and writer of short stories. Her stories include "Rain", which led to the 2001 film of the same name, directed by Christine Jeffs and also the 2001 ballet by the Rosas Company, set to "Music for Eighteen Musicians" a 1976 score by Steve Reich. Her novel The Boy and the Sea won the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year award in 2007. Her 2012 novel "The Big Music" won the Book of the Year in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. The novel took seven years to write, and was inspired by pibroch, the classical music of the Great Highland Bagpipe. She is professor of writing practice at the University of Dundee, and Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford.”—Wikipedia