The Doloriad (2022) by Missouri Williams

Author Missouri Williams

Book Review

The Doloriad (2022)

by Missouri Williams

    One of the consequences of striving for gender equity in my reading is trying to avoid books written by women from well off backgrounds about the difficulties of motherhood and relationships.  I'd rather read anything else.  So when I hear about a work of literary fiction written by a woman and it is some sort of foul minded post apocalyptic nightmare about the lives of an incestuous family which has managed to survive the end of the world, I say to myself, "Sign me up!"   The Doloriad is interesting on a couple different levels.  First, there is the high modernist technique, a variety of stream of consciousness narratives by various mal-formed monster humans. 

  The Doloriad... is really something.  What it is exactly, beyond foul and kinda breathtaking, and beyond that, it just stands out among the welter of sad family melodrama that dominates literary fiction in the United States, whether written by men or women.