O Fallen Angel

O Fallen Angel is a triptych of modern-day America set in a banal Midwestern landscape, inspired by Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. There is Mommy, a portrait of housewife psychosis, cruelly and crudely drawn, fenced in by her own small mind. There is Maggie, Mommy's unfortunate daughter whom she infects with fairytales, a Dora stuffed numb with pills, a casualty of gender roles and the DSM-IV. Then there is the mysterious martyr-figure Malachi, a Cassandra in army fatigues, the Septimus Smith to Mommy s Mrs. Dalloway, who stands at the foot of the highway holding signs of fervent prophecy, gaping at the bottomless abyss of the human condition, while SUVs scream past. Kate Zambreno's O Fallen Angel commits an act of anarchic literary sacrilege that calls to mind the rant and rage of an American Elfriede Jelinek, an exorcism of the culture wars and pop-cultural debris.