A feminist revolution in a tiny space and that’s all a feminist insurgency needs. Two pages and one line. A woman decides to ‘unstitch’ her whole skin after a cup of coffee one random afternoon. It sets a domino chain in action of other women doing the same. “Her clothes, skin and hair fell from her like the peeled rind of fruit, and her true body stepped out.” The men aren’t happy, of course, because they don’t know what they’re now looking at or dealing with. “When Greta’s husband came home he was horrified. He had never touched her sewing machine before – it frightened him – and he would certainly not touch Greta’s newly discovered body.” The details become increasingly bizarre, but serenely so, until later in the story sewing machines are outlawed and the evolution towards full unstitching consciousness begins. It’s magic-realism you can both imagine and happily fail to imagine. I remember when this book came out, people were quietly in awe. It’s one of those stories that signed me up as a reader of Grudova’s work for life.
First published in The Doll’s Alphabet, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017
A Personal Anthology 