Finalist, Asian American Literary Award & Shortlisted, PEN/Osterweil
PRAISE
“There is no more perfect place to be than in Molly Gaudry’s tender, dirt-floored novella, We Take Me Apart. Oh cabbage leaves, oh roses, oh orange-slice childhood grins: this book broke my heart. Its sad memory-tropes come from fairy tales and childhood books. With language, Gaudry is as loving and careful as one is with a matchbook . . . when wishing to set the whole world on fire.” — KATE BERNHEIMER
“Molly Gaudry’s debut evokes the spirit of iconic fairy tales that have transported readers for centuries. Her variations on these themes delineate the psychological journey from girlhood to womanhood. But We Take Me Apart is more than a retelling. In it, Gaudry reconstitutes the essence of what makes fairy tales compelling, and she does so imaginatively and with great attention to language, the earmarks of poetry.” — CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY
“If you consider her novella poetry, then it borrows much from prose. And if you see it as prose, it allows for a poetic flavor. Gaudry walks this line with great poise and in that poise we find her greatest strength as a writer.” — PETE RICHTER, The Broad Set Writing Collective
“A Molly Gaudry word is so precise, it feels like a sentence.” —GREAT TWIN CITIES POETRY READ & ROAD SHOW
“It’s extraordinary, and I read it at one sitting, trying to parse the fairy tale images that punctuated its narrative. The book takes its reader somewhere so far distant from daily reality, and yet it remains comprehensible—if not conceptually, then verbally. The words are right, perfect, even though I often didn’t know, or was just learning, or was being taken somewhere by them. A wonderful gift.” —RUTH B. BOTTIGHEIMER
"Beautiful and perfect." — EDWARD J. RATHKE
"We Take Me Apart is a story of a woman trying to get by in a world whose vivid images are equally loving, cruel, and beautiful . . . " — PSYCHOPOMP
“An epic poem of epic mastery, We Take Me Apart centers on a girl who grows into a woman who grows into a heroine.” — PRICK OF THE SPINDLE
“This incredible verse novel(la) is infused with fairy tales and Gertude Stein, not to mention Gaudry’s own dreamlike, luscious voice. An almost visceral delight." — FLAVORWIRE
"Beautiful, haunting, ethereal. Molly Gaudry molds breath into beautiful words." — NIK KORPON
“Gaudry’s mastery of language, [her] use of . . . silence, the wet white space around the burn of language, reads at times as if a character from Beckett had crawled or hobbled into a fairy tale—the kind of Beckett character that keeps his or her silence, only to suddenly wax eloquent in manic bursts.” — AMBER SPARKS
“A cross between silence and fairy tale, Gaudry’s Beckettian narrative sews bright bits to near-faint whispers, slowly swaddling us in quiet and darkness.” — BRIAN EVENSON
“Amid this stark environment, Gaudry’s gorgeous lyric voice guides us through." — ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE FANS
"Not a word is out of place, nothing is missing, no extra words are added. Molly Gaudry has worked this section, and every other section in the book, to the very essence of what is necessary to capture her readers and not let them go.” — EMERGING WRITERS NETWORK
“[Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian] is famous for its poetic prose and unflinching violence, but there’s a void of femininity. . . . Enter Molly Gaudry. . . . [Her] prose, steeped in poetry as much as McCarthy’s, spirals upward, elevating and exploding. The creators and destroyers, the beautiful and the gory, and the mythical and contemporary all thrive in balance. To read Molly Gaudry is to read Angela Carter’s cutthroat narrative spoken through the hopelessly hopeful characters of Lydia Millet, all arranged in space with the care of an impressionist painter.” — HOBART
"We Take Me Apart is a dazzleflage of a book. The stuttering disrupted language of this cubist concoction disappears before your ears, sinks into your eyes. This aggressive dress camouflage reweaves Gertrude Stein’s rewoven grammar of worsted silk-screened gabardine into a fully ripped patois-ed pattern of stunning wonder.”
— MICHAEL MARTONE
“Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart works ‘thread into lace.’ . . . Especially vivid in this book-length work is the mother’s entrance and exit, where the ragged lines swell and turn sonnet-like with love.” — TERESE SVOBODA
"In Molly Gaudry’s We Take Me Apart, the ordinary becomes mythical, what may be autobiographical becomes a fable, and simple lines or sentences ring with ominous music. Even the empty space between the lines seems to resonate with invisible narrative. A stunning debut.” — RICHARD GARCIA
“. . . gossamer & emotional, . . . a story of transformation over space & time, a story of love for mothers, partners, food & lace. . . . a story that slips between fable & experience . . ." — MATHIAS SVALINA
“White space, planes and planes of it. . . . We Take Me Apart is a novel’s answer to a room. . . . I read it three times . . . inhaling its perfume. . . . The scent is delicate and leaves a trace of itself. . . . The book details grace. . . it will haunt like a remembrance of fragrance or swoosh of hair or panoply of mother as tart then sweet and suddenly elusive as memories of one’s own.” — AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW
“Gaudry’s work implies that life, at its most essential, is the memory of love, hope, and the rooms it has occupied. . . . We Take Me Apart is an exercise in empathy for the reader. It is pure song and story. This book is a gift.” — [PANK]
EXCERPTS
long ago
in a different version
it was not a glass slipper but a glass dress
it was not beautiful
it was not flowing like a stream
it did not have a train wider than an acre
in this version everyone could see everything
nothing was left to the imagination
due to the drought
all the people in town
children too
used their spades to uproot the vegetable gardens
day after day
after day
the day finally came when all they could do was look into the cloudiness and pray
disgraced
for why else would the gray lining of their clear sky withhold unless it had been decided that the only useful thing was for them to suffer
there was not so much as a cabbage leaf that year
cold came to be known as night
heaviness was no longer a worry
the town turned to violence
a rich man’s cook was discovered making sauce in the heart of his house
as everyone knows that food does not smell until it boils
until it sweats
the people still there
who had not yet gone away
their bellies round with malnutrition
tongues useless calluses
detected that woman’s sauce
came for her with a knife
the first ingredient they added was her toe
cut at a neat incline
they called it butter
they added her bottom half
called it custard
her top half
they called tea
when she cried they heard only the whistles of their stomachs filled with her
they raised their glasses
toasted
this was the story Mother told to get me to behave
tucked into my bedding
I once asked BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GIRL IN THE GLASS DRESS and Mother’s answer was JUST COUNT YOUR LUCKY STARS YOU’RE SAFE IN BED AND NOT A COOK FOR A RICH MAN
the way he made her feel
the way he looked at her
she left nothing to the imagination
because Mother was not supposed to have a child
I made it difficult for her to retain employment
so it was sometimes as if I never existed
I was never taught to read or write
there was always so much else to do
the sewing
tending garden
selling its offerings
the cleaning of our living spaces
which
while small
were not so humble as to be neglected
it was not always work
because there were so few others in our lives we were starved for attention
so Mother made up a game called flattering
to play I had to pay her a compliment
after which she would say THANK YOU and give me a thing she had found or been given
the yellow rubber innard of a frog’s eye
bloody feathers
a fistful of water
although we were never rich or well-attended
with such playthings I was pleased
springs
when the sky was pink
when all the out of doors were bright blossoms of pink
I would have liked to play
but Mother took odd jobs cleaning
brought me along to learn the game of princess
in my favorite house there were copper pots hanging from the kitchen walls
the kitchen was closed to the woman of the house
the cook had rules
one was children should eat cookies quietly at the table while mothers cleaned
those three spring days the game of princess actually made sense
but there was still the rest of the season
I had never encountered rudeness but from spring sprung fine tall ladies with short tempers whose words I scrubbed away
desperate for them to relieve us of their gazes so we could return again to our game in which the trials were dirt
spotlessness
our single goal
summers there were children to play with but their finery embarrassed me
I had overheard a mother define play clothes as rags
disposable
of no consequence if misplaced
at home rags were not disposable
if misplaced
the consequence was dirt
fall was when children returned to school
I was grateful to escape them
their mockery of my appearance
which Mother said was not so bad
one year when she came home from market she frowned and said YOU ARE A WOMAN NOW AND THERE WILL BE NO MORE GAMES, DO YOU UNDERSTAND
as there was only one correct answer I said it
that night instead of dinner she said SIT BETWEEN MY KNEES and when I did she withdrew from her purse several red leaves that she wove into my hair
she said YOU ARE A QUEEN, MY DEAR, AND THIS IS YOUR CROWN, HAVE PRIDE
I smiled so that she could not see
she reached for something
placed it in my lap
it was a book
I did not know how to use it until she said GO ON, OPEN IT and all over those pages were photographs of the world in black and white and many shades of grain
in the weeks following my crown fell apart until at last there was only a single red leaf
which I placed between the pages of my favorite photograph
I did not know it but the photograph was of America
the Statue of Liberty
I did not know that one day many years later I would stand inside the Statue of Liberty and say HOW LASTING IS YOUR CROWN, MY DEAR, HAVE PRIDE
winters Mother said TONIGHT IT IS CUTLET every night
we began each week with a loaf of bread
a knife
she said LET ME CUT THAT FOR YOU and by the end of the winter I let her cut twelve loaves
how soft it was within those loaves
those crusts that grew harder by the day
in a different version it was not a pea but a cocoa bean
you came to us in the night
soaked in cold
trembling with fatigue
Mother brought you inside where the last of our candles were burning
prepared for you a bed of many mattresses
in the morning she asked how you had slept
you nodded
I was the one who did the beds
knew you had not slept on those mattresses
had slept on the floor
and why
I had never seen a being beautiful as you
who
in passing my cocoa-bean test
brought me great inspiration
the dresses I fashioned from that point forward were winged creations made from the excesses of water on hand
each drop sewn one on top of the next so that the texture was rippling as a pond beneath the moon
the dresses took on the buoyancy of flotation devices
hung in the air around us as I made them
I saw you reach up to touch the hem of the highest one
when it burst
your hand frozen in the air
you were as wet as the night of your arrival
the children who were to wear those dresses did not cause them to burst but went away like small butterflies
one day you indicated by the look on your face that you had never seen such wearing
after many months
when Mother was away
cleaning homes because it was spring again
you said HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO AWAY FROM HERE AND TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH ME MAKING THESE DRESSES and I said I DID NOT KNOW YOU COULD SPEAK and you said DON’T BE STUPID, OF COURSE I CAN SPEAK, BUT I HAVE BEEN IN MOURNING and I said WHAT IS MOURNING and you said SUFFERING and I said WHAT IS SUFFERING and you said IMAGINE THERE WERE FOOD IN THIS HOUSE AND NOT JUST COCOA BEANS BUT SO MUCH FOOD YOU COULD NOT EAT IT ALL and I said DON’T BE STUPID and you said THAT WOULD BE THE OPPOSITE OF SUFFERING and I did not understand but said I SEE
when Mother came home I told her we were leaving in the morning and she said I CAN’T FORCE YOU TO STAY and TELL ME WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE
because I knew that all she had was cocoa I said MAY I HAVE COCOA PLEASE