2017 read #4: The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente.

The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente
150 pages
Published 2017
Read from September 25 to September 26
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Valente is one of my favorite authors, and this novella of interconnected tales -- the viewpoints of comic book heroines killed or bereaved or discarded to further the dramatic arcs of male superheroes -- might be my second favorite book of hers, bested only by the intoxicating Radiance.

In recent years, especially, I've felt that Valente has come to rely on a particular self-aware, metafictional narrative voice, half noirish pitter-patter, half "Auntie Cathy tells the kiddies a tale." At times (as in the disappointing Speak Easy), it can seem as if Valente got stuck in that voice halfway through writing her Fairyland series, and can't help but churn out puns and genre-aware wordplay to the tune of a secret knock on a bootlegger's door. Monologues begins in a similar key: "Dead. Dead. Dead. Flying Ace of the Corpse Corps. Stepping the light Deathtastic. I don't actually know what a doornail is, but we have a lot in common." My fears that this would prove to be another Speak Easy were quickly buried, thankfully, under the weight of how awesome this book is. Valente's go-to voice might make it hard to tell her books apart, but it can still be an effective tool when wielded with this precision.

The narrators, almost all of them "fridged" inhabitants of Deadtown, are excellent pastiches of certain funny-book characters whose names are not public domain. There's the Gwen Stacy figure, the Jane Grey/Phoenix psychokinetic, the Harley Quinn, the Atlantean princess whose only mistake was to fall in love with Aquaman. The chapter on the non-union equivalent of Harley Quinn and her pyromaniac love for "Mr. Punch" might be the best thing to have ever come out of the Batman mythos -- and I'm including The Lego Batman Movie in that category.

This is no mere work of fan-fiction, however. Valente's incisive, memorable phrases -- normally the highlight of any of her works -- here serve to shape a picture of the toxic boys'-club of fiction, and not just the kind printed in four colors. Monologues is a work of elegant rage, a knife-tip against a festering boil of literature's manocentric maleocracy, a literary landscape where female characters are set-dressings to be employed or tossed away however they best fit the male heroes' dramatic arcs.