Kristen Roupenian’s stories You Know You Want This, range across the bizarre, the mundane, the unnerving and the comical. Each chapter is a surprise for the reader as they venture into the unknown again and again, but for every leap of faith the reader is rewarded.
Roupenian, whose tales are at times disturbing, shot to fame with her short story Cat Person, which went famously viral and which features in this collection. Cat Person and the other stories included explore the constant power dichotomy between men and women. Women here are not always victims, sometimes they are the perpetrators. Their desires are horrifying and disturbing, their actions fascinating and revolting.
Take for instance the woman who has an innate desire to bite people, to sink her teeth into their flesh and rejoice in the thrill of it. "The truth was that if a woman bit a man in an office environment, there would be a strong assumption that the man had done something to deserve it."
Or the grown successful women who fantasise about the boy from a dirty film they saw as youngsters, or the power play between a couple and their weak-willed friend who enacts their sexual fantasies with an irreparable climax.
Roupenian meanders down paths and into topics that adults are often to afraid to discuss out loud. She examines women in the workplace, at home, on dates, with friends and families and the various dichotomies that play out in those environments through their everyday relationships. The tales are short and sweet, the prose direct and the overall structure and narrative straightforward. Despite the at times challenging plot developments, they are always accessible and nothing that couldn’t be consumed on a twenty-minute Luas journey or over an afternoon’s refreshing G n T.
Similarly, the collection welcomes all readers regardless of gender, although I would most definitely recommend them for ages 16+. Even though the protagonists and stories are often told from female perspective, I wouldn’t see it as excluding any type of male readership. Just like the collection itself, it is free for all, open to anything and anyone.
It is so exciting to read stories nowadays that can be engaging and challenging without attempting to shove intellectual ponderings down your throat. Roupenian’s stories are is set in the same weirdly wonderful sphere of abstract reality, familiar yet estranged, that made June Caldwells’ Room Little Darker so appealing. You can’t help but turn each page with a growing anticipation and perhaps slight sense of dread - but then again isn’t that the excitement of the blank page?
There is only so much I can say about this novel to try and convey the whimsical energy and unnerving nature contained within its pages. Go out, buy the book, and see what you make of it yourself.
