Parachute Woman by Laura Migdal (Legible Books) $14.99 168pgs.

I will admit right up front that, having published two pieces which are included in this volume, I fully expected going in that I would like this book. What I was not intellectually or emotionally prepared for was how much I would love it. Although, on a superficial level, this book reminded of early Carol Maso mixed with the minimalism of a Susan Minot, Migdal possesses an honesty and ingenuity I've never really found in either of those writers. Her rhythms unfurl like a slow train ride through a warm, windy tunnel as the ubiquitous female narrator drifts through a life of restless odyssey of sex, drugs and unfulfilled, abusive marriage. Although not a direct retelling of the mythic story of Io, the beautiful young woman forced to wander the world in the form of a cow, there is more than a passing thematic resemblance to the narrator's story. The narrative is unmistakably postmodern, yet it works on a mythic level that one rarely finds in post-modernism.

The story unfolds as a series of non-linear, viewpoint-shifting, genre-bending vignettes:

"You will keep a spiral notebook in which you list every man
you have ever fucked.
You will spend two days lying in the coal-dark of the closet on
top of your shoes.
A psychiatrist will tell you that medication is what you need. . . ."

Is it fiction? Is it poetry? Migdal exhibits a fine and masterful control of this self-reflective narrative, replete with memorable imagery and buoyed by an obvious joy in language. Here's another taste:

"Someone's taken the wrong chip out of the computer of
the collective unconscious: This is not mine. It belongs to someone
else, someone unencumbered by labored thoughts and too
many care accidents. Someone who does not smoke, someone
who execises regularly and eats fresh veggies. Someone who
is not in love with frozen macaroni and cheese and old
photographs and layers of men, pasted on her skin like many
years of wallpaper."

Suffice it to say, I couldn't find one damn flaw in any of this. I almost can't believe this is a first novel. Migdal hits it way out of the park and raises the bar for small press writers everywhere.

--Reviewed by JCE