Book Review-- Potted Meat : A Fragmented Masterpiece

Potted meat is a sleek novel written by Steven dunn. Fragmentary narratives are nowadays rising as mainstream literary pieces. It all goes through a semi autobiographical tone and beneath the fragmented surface visceral intervention goes through a deep and dismal course. Strangeness, beauty, innocence and abusive scratches of a child all come in such an impacting way that the necessity of conventional plot dilutes. Fragmentary narrative talks about something broken. Human life is fragmented and it feels like tearing apart. Especially after the post war world, postmodernism arose in literature to probe these fragments. Sigmund Freud psychological theories have been emphasized on the fragmented self.

Potted meat is a novel which focuses on a specific experience at a specific time without diluting the text in chronology, setting and charecterisation. It is like hotscotch allows readers to jump from pieces in self opted directions.

Potted Meat is set in a tawdry town of southern west virginia in which a young boy struggles through various traumas and tensions.

Some pieces are deeply poignant.

This novel has won the Whiting Award and is a bestseller published by Tarpaulin Sky Press.

Dr Pragya Suman