Women I Know by Katerina Gibson
“When she is beautiful, it’s the type of beauty that comes with whispers of evil incarnate, you get it. Seduce your husband, kill the king. She can’t win.”
Katerina Gibson's unsettling and darkly humorous collection of short stories Women I Know (2022) explores gender and queerness, speculative futures, the climate crisis, mother-daughter relationships and what it means to be a 'woman.' I'd first read one of their short stories How to Disappear into Yourself (in 8 steps) which won the VU Short Story Prize in 2018, so I was excited to dive into this collection.
Gibson has a great knack for dialogue and voice, and many of the stories are essentially monologues from the perspective of a first person narrator. Many of these narrators are disaffected young white millennial women, enthralled by social media (in all senses of the word), concerned about the impending climate crisis, and caught up in the throes of late-stage capitalism.
Through their lives, Gibson engages with archetypes, tropes and stories of ‘womanhood,’ both contemporary and ancient. In "Intermission II: On the Mythology in the Room (Field Notes)” she takes us back on a guided tour of the familiar stories of womanhood from myth, fairytale and fable - exploring how women's realities have been shaped and limited by the "symbols and meanings we've taken into our bodies."
In the punchy fragments of "Intermission I: All the Stories I Started but Never Finished Because of the Time-Restrictive and Distracting Nature of the Gig Economy", Gibson takes on modern 'stories' of womanhood that are all-too-familiar to us:
"A woman has a son. As a young man he commits an atrocious crime against a young woman. Everyone blames the woman.
A woman has a son. As a young man he commits an atrocious crime against a young woman. The son does not blame himself.
A woman has a son. As a young man he commits an atrocious crime against a young woman. The rape victim's mother blames the woman."
Gibson's unflinching eye and dark humour is apparent here, which also comes across through the juxtaposition of the mundanities of everyday life with disasters of apocalyptic proportions:
"A woman can't orgasm. The natural world is collapsing at an alarming rate."
The climate crisis makes its appearance throughout the collection with appropriate bleakness and terror, while technology, particularly the seismic influence of social media, also makes waves. The narrator of the first story 'Glitches in the Algorithm' attempts to change every aspect of her life in order to trick The Algorithm, while 'Preparation' is written as a series of Instagram posts, skewering eco-conscious influencer culture to the extreme with a surreal twist.
Despite the searing social commentary, I found that several stories fizzled out, rather than ended with a bang. In 'The Shape of ______" a companion/sex worker whose clients include men like Terrence, a convicted paedophile who she helps with gardening, is disowned by her family and forms a close bond with her downstairs neighbour George and her son Lucas. Yet the potential emotional power of the ending was slightly lacking and left me wanting more.
Two clever and haunting stories, however, left a great impression on me, and those were 'Constellation in the Left Eye' and 'Fertile Soil.' In 'Constellation in the Left Eye,' a young woman works on a production line, adding the eyes to faces of life-like dolls. The dolls' purpose is not spelled out, but becomes chillingly apparent when the managers tour the facility and take a special, sordid interest in the girl. This revelation of power dynamics is utterly compelling and explored with gripping storytelling and beautiful, surprising imagery.
'Fertile Soil' was the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and my overall favourite in the collection. The protagonist Anna discovers another Anna slowly but surely inhabiting her life. Melancholy, humorous and poignant, it has the feel of a Rivka Galchen short story, with identity constantly slipping just beyond reach. It also ends with the most perfect closing line:
“I felt, as I rubbed my thumb over my fingertips, as if their prints would dissolve.”
Ultimately, as a commentary on gender, the collection as a whole didn't feel too 'new' to me: reading it, I felt I had heard many of these stories, or versions of them, before and gender itself remained largely untroubled. However, its dark humour, speculative imagination and feminist leanings means that fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Chloe Wilson and Paige Clark will find much to enjoy here.
Many thanks to Simon & Schuster for a review copy.
Emily Riches is a writer and editor from Mullumbimby, currently living on Cammeraygal land (Sydney). She founded Aniko Press to bring passionate writers and curious readers together, discover new voices and create a space for creative community. You can get in touch at emily@anikopress.com.