Who Is Mary Sue?

Collins, S. (2018) Who Is Mary Sue? Faber & Faber. ISBN 9780571346615

Abstract

In the language of fan fiction, a ‘Mary Sue’ is an idealised and implausibly flawless character: a female archetype that can infuriate audiences for its perceived narcissism. Such is the setting for this brilliant and important debut by Sophie Collins. In a series of verse and prose collages, Who Is Mary Sue? exposes the presumptive politics behind writing and readership: the idea that men invent while women reflect; that a man writes of the world outside while a woman will turn to the interior. Part poetry and part reportage, at once playful and sincere, these fictive–factive miniatures deploy original writing and extant quotation in a mode of pure invention. In so doing, they lift up and lay down a revealing sequence of masks and mirrors that disturb the reflection of authority. A work of captivation and correction, this is a book that will resonate with anyone concerned with identity, shame, gender, trauma, composition and culture: everyone, in other words, who wishes to live openly and think fearlessly in the modern world. Who Is Mary Sue? is a work for our times and a question for our age: it is a handbook for all those willing to reimagine prescriptive notions of identity and selfhood.

• Item Type: Books
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Collins, Sophie
• Authors: Collins, S.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General); P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism; P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• ISBN: 9780571346615

Related URLs

• University of Glasgow Library Catalogue