She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. In a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch (Blake Butler), a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. The New York Times Book Review A haunted feminist fable, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is the story of a woman navigating between gender and class roles to empower herself and fulfill her dreams. It is a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one's true calling.FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE Cain's small but mighty novel reads like a ghost story and packs the punch of a feminist classic. Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?

Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor-social and erotic-but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained.

The New York Times Book ReviewĪ haunted feminist fable, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is the story of a woman navigating between gender and class roles to empower herself and fulfill her dreams. FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZEĬain's small but mighty novel reads like a ghost story and packs the punch of a feminist classic.

Indelicacy novel