Synopses & Reviews
A fever dream of a novel — strangely funny, entirely unconventional — Valerie conjures the life, mind, and art of American firebrand Valerie Solanas
In April 1988, Valerie Solanas — the writer, radical feminist, author of the SCUM Manifesto and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol — was discovered dead at fifty-two in her hotel room, in a grimy corner of San Francisco, alone, penniless, and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings.
In Valerie, a nameless narrator revisits the room where Solanas died, the courtroom where she was tried and convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands where she spent her childhood and was repeatedly raped by her father and beaten by her alcoholic grandfather, and the mental hospitals where she was shut away.
A leading feminist in Sweden and one of the most acclaimed writers in Scandinavia, Sara Stridsberg here blurs the boundaries between history and fiction, self-making and storytelling, madness and art, love and tragedy. Through imagined conversations and monologues, reminiscences and rantings, she reconstructs this most intriguing and enigmatic of women, reaching back in time to amplify her voice and bring her powerful, heartbreaking story into new light.
Review
"Inventive and stimulating....Stridsberg entertainingly casts new light on both Solanas and on how society views pop culture."
Publishers Weekly
Review
"Sara Stridsberg's fantasy about the life of Valerie Solanas has attained the status of myth. We can finally read that novel — a cross between Franz Kafka's Amerika and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis — in this powerful, poetic translation. Stridsberg conjures up the loneliness and desire of Valerie, our Valerie — shit-stirrer, tormented genius, cast-off misfit — as well as the vertigo, passion, and complexity of a whole life beyond and through the sensationalized headlines, the caricature. Stridsberg's intensity and love in writing Valerie's life is something of its own manifesto."
Kate Zambreno, author of Heroines
Review
"In Valerie, Sara Stridsberg has given us a wild ride through the haunted house of an infamous woman's memory, experience, and embodiment. A love-letter to the deep insanity of peak twentieth-century America, and testament to a life lived in its margins."
Elisa Albert, author of After Birth
Review
"This is a brilliant re-imagining of the life and times of one of America's great cultural icons. If Solanas was alive I'm sure she'd be amazed (and perhaps even gratified) to see what poetic feeling her remarkable destiny has aroused."
Vivian Gornick, author of The Odd Woman and the City
About the Author
Sara Stridsberg is an internationally acclaimed writer and playwright whose work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. A former member of the Swedish Academy, she is a leading feminist and artist in her native Sweden and around the world. Her novel Valerie: or, The Faculty of Dreams received the Nordic Council Literature Prize and was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
Deborah Bragan-Turner is a translator of Swedish literature and a former bookseller and academic librarian. She studied Scandinavian languages at University College London, and her translations include works by Per Olov Enquist and Anne Swärd.