Awkward-ature: The Meat and Spirit Plan

Awkward-ature: Literature that may be written about or in the style of the awkwardist cultural movement. Passages may make one laugh out of embarrassment or uncomfortableness. Sentences may induce pleasurable cringing and a deep-rooted connection between the awkward writing style of the author as well as his or her awkward readers. In reference to OnwardAwkward, Awkward-ature attempts to seek out the best and most enjoyable awkward literature around.

This week's Awkward-ature recommendation goes to:

Selah Saterstrom's Meat and Spirit Plan.

This book is completely awkward in all the best ways. With lonely, isolated paragraphs on random pages and black and white images of hard-to-make-out-paintings, there is everything to love about this book. It is an exemplary work of experimental fiction. The story itself is part loss of innocence, part coming of age (I hate that term, but so what), part despair and part survival. We see the narrator (who may or may not be an alcoholic/drug-addict--gotta love that) transform from a naive adolescent whom consistently finds herself in sexually compromising situations into a unique, autonomy-conscious female in a postmodern master's writing program located in a Dublin university. It is through art that the narrator comprehends her notion of self and ultimately through the deterioration of her physical self that she discovers the value within. If that sounds cheesy, it isn't. Bottom line: read it, it's quick and worth it. It's touching without meaning to be. And best of all, it's got plenty of well-developed and poignantly awkward moments.