Frances Johnson

by Stacey Levine

Book Overview

It's clear that something strange is afoot in -Munson, the fictional Florida hamlet where Frances Johnson takes place. A volcano seethes on the outskirts of town, strange animals skitter in the shadows, and a dense brown fog has settled overhead. Pets and people vanish. Unfurling over a period of days leading up to the town's annual dance, the story follows Frances's mounting restlessness, as she must decide whether to take control of her life or...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 189124129X
• ISBN13: 9781891241291
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Verse Chorus Press
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Good enough to enjoy

Now this book has gotten a lot of hype. Stacey Levine has gotten a lot of hype. Clear Cut Press makes very nice books. Frances Johnson is a very well made book. It fits in your pocket and takes serious abuse. However, Frances Johnson is a pretty quick read. The language and figures of speech didn't make me think too much, since most of it was pretty obvious. Levine does create an otherwordly atmosphere in the first two-three pages, and on page 10 you're sure she's got you sucked into a vacant pot-boiler. The pacing is masterful. Frances Johnson is a fun read, but the hype led me to believe that it was a masterpiece. It's not. Just a great read, but not demanding, like Beckett, Kafka and Duras (to respond to another reviewer). I'd highly recommend this book, however. It should appeal to a wide range of readers. Thank you, Frank Sauce

An original, hilarious vision

Frances Johnson is a deeply funny, haunting book that obsessed me during the weeks I read it. Stacey Levine's prose is simple, but it leads you in directions you never expect. Like her first novel, Dra__, Frances Johnson seems in a submerged way to be about sexuality, and also identity, individuality, stuntedness, the endless circularity of human feelings. Levine sets her story in a drab landscape and renders it in prose that is often laugh-out-loud funny. Echoes of Kafka's bleak yet empathetic vision are frequent, as are moments of Jane Bowles and possibly Carson McCullers. Levine sets her novel in Munson, a fictional Florida town where conformity is a mania-the only mania. There is virtually no other energy on hand. So while Frances lives in semi-contented mutual lassitude with boyfriend Ray, she is repeatedly urged by other characters to find someone better, specifically the almost camp figure of Mark Carol, a Hollywood-style doctor bachelor who arrives in town just in time for the biggest event of the year - the town dance. Even Ray urges Frances toward Mark Carol: "Frances ... everyone in town wants you to begin your life in earnest; we both know it's true!" Levine keeps asking, in the book, `Where will Frances Johnson end up?' We watch Frances crash around in darkness, fall asleep, run from one person to another for advice - do anything but move purposefully forward. Will she sense her real desires, and will she be able to do anything about them? That's the question the book daringly poses - after all, it's a question that confronts all of us - while the story seems to putt around in weird, obscured landscapes getting basically nowhere. I admire the way Levine writes about something real and articulable without articulating it - instead, her narrative emulates the groping that is really done to reach it. Brilliant. As with Dra__, Levine's vision in this novel gestures toward a larger condition. The conformity that spreads throughout the story like a smothering blanket is emblematic of the torpor of current American culture. To me, this is the most brilliant aspect of a book full of unusual and witty surprises. Like a dream that never ends, the novel continually returns to the image of Frances on her bicycle, peering through fog, trying to reach someone who will provide some clarity. Often, Frances is trying to get to Nancy, an older woman whose conversations with Frances sound like therapy sessions. Nancy's attention enthralls Frances; she wishes at one point she could never leave the older woman's presence. But at another point Nancy makes it clear she has needs of her own, and it rattles the perfection of their relationship. Throughout the novel, the simple act of being with another human is rife with trouble - far from an unfamiliar theme, but rendered by Levine with highly original strokes.

A Quirky Tale of Individuation

Frances Johnson is stuck: in a passionless relationship with her longtime suitor, Ray; in the small town, Munson, where residents eat hard crackers for every meal; at the edges of her own self which Frances, at age 38, characterizes as neither woman nor girl. Most of all, Frances Johnson is stuck beneath the oppressive infantalizing of a blaring mother who criticizes Frances' wardrobe and relationships with equal verve. This is a simultaneously poignant, hilarious and heart-wrenching tale of individuation with all the sparse, existential humor of Beckett, the off-beat metaphorical imagery of Kafka, and the poetic, textured syntax of Duras. Once again, Stacey Levine shines as one of contemporary fiction's most gifted voices.

frances johnson

01.08.06 after reading frances johnson, i wanted to eat a pomegranate. without regret. stains. just like the words that stacey levine keeps writing. words that i cannot forget, that stain my mind. like the seedy fruit i most desire. cannot get enough. while i read frances johnson, the music of dcfc, the Plans cd, kept playing in my head. two good brain candies, melt into one. i'm on a diet and it really sucks. think i'll read a book...