A floating blue apparition of the Virgin Mary. That's what Clementine Logan, jaded American, sees from the window of her No. 38 bus in London. This is the first in a series of alarming religious visions, triggered by her new relationship with fellow foreigner Per, a green-eyed Norwegian undergraduate. Set against a backdrop of gritty East London streets and post/pop-everything academia, the relationship with Per grows more twisted, the miracles grow weirder, and soon something's gotta snap.

Girl on a Stick is all about breaking: breakups, nervous breakdowns, breakthroughs. Yet the novel is also about the aftermath of a break: what happens after the cracking and splitting; how you can grow new skins or maybe even extra legs. Both blasphemous and reverent—and ostensibly an account of a troubled relationship—the real target of this novel is not only patriarchal institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church, but also mindless masochism. A blister-black comedy.

Read an excerpt from Girl on a Stick.

Alaskan-born Kathleen Bryson's first novel Mush was published in 2001. She has two BA degrees (Anthropology and Swedish), studied a postgraduate year of acting at the London Academy of Performing Arts, and received her MA in Film from the London College of Printing. She has lived nineteen years in Alaska, thirteen in Europe, and five in the continental U.S.

Read
Sex, Clementine, and the Catholic Church:
Lucia Pajon Interviews Kathleen Bryson
about Mush and Girl on a Stick.

Visit the Kathleen Bryson webpage.