She-Clown, and other stories

Hannah Vincent's characters are everyday heroines atwork and play: young and old, fulfilled and frustrated, professional and amateur, educated and uneducated, knowing and unknowing. Their lives are transformed as they try to be themselves. Captured in familiar situations as well as in flights of fancy, these are women engaged in acts of self-preservation: they are exhilarated to discover the joy and surprise of other women's company, they make bold sexual choices, they go on a night-time excursions; as grandmothers, they give their grandchildren unsuitable presents. In one story, a young woman and her mother harness their creativity to express their horror at the world around them. In another, a teenage mother struggles with her feelings for the father of her child. One story follows a woman who experiences the freedom of the workplace while another shows how imprisoning it can be. One discovers how far her career has pushed her out to the margins of family life while another contemplates retirement. In the title story a woman catches a whiff of what respect and reciprocal attraction feels like.