Verging on the Pertinent Book Summary and Study Guide

This 1989 collection of stories is spare in style but rich in imagination. Emshwiller tries to minimize character, plot, dialogue, and many other conventionalities of storytelling; there's something Kafka-esque in her largely first-person tales of a woman deserting her husband to live in a cave with a bear ("Yukon"), a goddess creating the perfect man to worship her ("If Not Forever, When?"), or human females finding themselves making do in an alien culture ("Escape Is No Accident" and the title story). There's even a tale in which Rochester's first wife from _Jane Eyre_ flirts with Joseph K. outside the castel ("Expecting Sunshine and Getting It"), and another in which a giant woman who the World Trade Center with a male executive in hand ("Queen Kong," naturally). Very distinctive work!
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