Bound by Blue

Fiction. BOUND BY BLUE by Meg Tuite sparkles darkly with dense, poetic prose also resembling a hidden knife or gag in the deepest shade of indigo. At the heart of Tuite's work is memory--specifically, often, the memory of sexual trauma. From externally successful medical student Audrey in 'The F Word, ' whose revisited sexual past spurs a destructive eating disorder that nearly debilitates her current romantic relationship, to the sweet seven year old Marliss in 'The Tooth Fairy, ' writing with a child's literacy to the Tooth Fairy in the nearly impossible hope of being saved from her brother's molesting friend, Tuite deftly runs the gamut of characters emerging from the camp of life's walking wounded. Often, I found, while reading this collection, that I had to pause and absorb, spend a moment away after reading one particular story or another. Tuite's work is that dark, trenchant, and powerful. The binding garotte here is that of forced silences, of invisible shames, of acts of violence done by one individual to another, the cumulative maimed butterfly effect of these agents--and be forewarned, with the aid of Tuite's deft skill, the monsters are out of the closets, lingering with lambs, in this explosive collection where even the darkest of her characters is acerbically revealed as human, multi-faceted, and just flawed enough to be somewhat sympathetic in a horrifying and double-edged way that only increases the reader's understanding of their abuse's terrifying resonance for their victims.--Heather Fowler