Indelicacy: A Novel

About this book

FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTIONS FIRST NOVEL PRIZE "Cains small but mighty novel reads like a ghost story and packs the punch of a feminist classic." The New York Times Book Review A haunted feminist fable Amina Cains Indelicacy is the story of a woman navigating between gender and class roles to empower herself and fulfill her dreams. In "a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch" (Blake Butler) a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man but having gained a husband a house high society and a maid she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming laborsocial and eroticbut she is now however passively forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary? Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys Octavia Butler Clarice Lispector and Jean Genet Amina Cains Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost a fable without a moral and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. It is a novel about seeing class desire anxiety pleasure friendship and the battle to find ones true calling.