Gerl Dine is a Midwestern wife and mom who longs to be fully known. So long as she pretends to be fine, she doubts that anyone’s love for her is real. In a dangerous experiment, she seeks to redeem a traumatic past by staging a re-enactment of it, hoping she can show up differently and forgive herself. When this proves disastrous, she has no choice but to end her suffering from the inside out.
Carl has nothing left to lose. Molested from birth, his cynicism is natural, and he grieves the suffering of the world. His one vanity is his long brown hair, which he pampers with salon shampoo scented with rosemary and mint. He has crooked, yellowing teeth, and he reveals the whole mouthful when he laughs at his own sarcasm. A pleaser, Gerl Dine is in awe (and envy) of his easy rudeness. She is kind to him, like she has been trained to be kind to everyone whether she likes them or not. Her innocence is the one thing he doesn’t have, never had, and she awakens in him a craving that turns into madness. After he first hurts her, her sadness infuriates him, and he keeps hurting her more, trying to possess her so he can make it better, so he can prove to her she’ll be ok. When he burns her apartment down, he is only wanting to give her a reason to need him, to move in with him so he can take care of her and she can see how much he loves her. He believes she is the one person on earth who would never hurt him, and, as the story will later reveal, he is wrong. He spends his whole life obsessing over her, even after he marries someone else, and this ensures he never has a real or intimate relationship with anyone. His obsession is his own protection, even as it leads to his undoing. He can’t truly trust anyone, and because of their experiences, neither can she.
Titles:
Man Eater
From Fucked-up to Free
Sukha My Dukkha
Comparables: I plan to spend more time reading comparables. This is a huge void for me.
Leslie Jamison Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
My femoir is similar to Jamison’s in terms of its honesty and some of its subject matter (divorce). Mine presses the ugly truth a little further, in cruder terms, and offers a bit more hope in the end.
Untamed, by Glennon Doyle
My femoir has some similar subject matter and style.
Hook Line: Gerl Dine, a Midwestern wife and mom, hates her husband and her fake life. Afraid she is doomed to be a man-hater forever, she faces down its roots - her own self-rejection and a secret past - and risks losing everything for the chance to fully inhabit herself.
Gerl Dine’s inner conflict is with herself. She hates her body and has been sabotaging her well being since childhood. Raised by unhappy women who scorn any woman who is sexually alive or selfish enough to be happy, Gerl Dine vows to be the first happy woman in her family. To do so, she must risk making choices for herself, but her mother abandons her for her small rebellion. Lost, she throws away all the rules and realizes too late how the rules were meant to protect her. Badly harmed and nearly killed, she stuffs her hate and her shame deep down and embarks on a life of pretending she is fine. She gets married but realizes that both self-loathing and its inversion, man-hating, is part of her inheritance, and she doesn’t know how to shake it. She tries harmless approaches to healing - medication, meditation, religion, art, but nothing seems to free her of her hatred. She feels the answer is outside of her—if she can get one person to know everything and still love her, she’ll be ok. She decides to be vulnerable with her husband and tell him everything, and his response is that he doesn’t want to know. She cares about him and wants a good life for her children, but her fury at a marriage where sex is required but emotional vulnerability is prohibited makes divorce inevitable. She aches for her past tormentor, because at least he knows what she knows; there is no secret required. She faces down this man who harmed her, fantasizing about a do-over where she can rewrite the story and show up differently. She thinks that if she can either defend herself well or fall in love with him, she can finally accept herself and be happy. The experience ends in disaster, and she is still left with the mystery of how to connect with and love her body and all its memories. She wants all of it to belong, but none of it is acceptable. Determined to heal at all costs, she will try anything, and a gay man grieving his impotence on the night before his death arrives with an opportunity for healing that requires Gerl Dine to silence all the judging women in her head. She misses her husband and the family they once were, but in order to be free, she has to continue to risk being true and hope she can bear the consequences. Claiming all that she is creates a complex blessing. Learning to love herself makes her love everyone else a lot better, but it means others may love her a lot less.
Setting
This story has its roots in the rural Midwest, a land where survival is a struggle. The soil is clay, studded with rocks, and there are no rules against poisoning the the creeks with discarded dishwashers, broken cars, and paint cans. Despite this, the beauty of this land prevails. Vines swallow up entire yards full of trash, studding them with purple morning glory. Fox tiptoe across the fields, birds sing. To survive as a woman, one must buck up and stay resilient in the face of harsh, age-old rules. In this environment, saturated with religious beliefs, social customs, and stereotypes about women and the female body, everyone earns a reputation for friendliness that belies the scorn tainting the very groundwater. Here, no one hates women more than women themselves. The message is, How Dare You Be Happier Than I Am. It is a land of fences, and the innocent groundhog who dares to frolic across the field will have its skull nailed to the fence post.
Part of the story is set in Kansas, where the vast space allows freedom but the wind prohibits any anchoring roots. The harsh gales hurl grit in one's eyes, and it is hard to see clearly. There is no sheltering tree, no forest in which one can hide. Everything is stripped down to its most vulnerable, and everything can be blown away.
Algonkian Retreats and Workshops - Assignments 2024, 2025, 2026
in Algonkian Writer Conferences - Events, FAQ, Contracts
Posted
This is a memoir.
Gerl Dine is a Midwestern wife and mom who longs to be fully known. So long as she pretends to be fine, she doubts that anyone’s love for her is real. In a dangerous experiment, she seeks to redeem a traumatic past by staging a re-enactment of it, hoping she can show up differently and forgive herself. When this proves disastrous, she has no choice but to end her suffering from the inside out.
Carl has nothing left to lose. Molested from birth, his cynicism is natural, and he grieves the suffering of the world. His one vanity is his long brown hair, which he pampers with salon shampoo scented with rosemary and mint. He has crooked, yellowing teeth, and he reveals the whole mouthful when he laughs at his own sarcasm. A pleaser, Gerl Dine is in awe (and envy) of his easy rudeness. She is kind to him, like she has been trained to be kind to everyone whether she likes them or not. Her innocence is the one thing he doesn’t have, never had, and she awakens in him a craving that turns into madness. After he first hurts her, her sadness infuriates him, and he keeps hurting her more, trying to possess her so he can make it better, so he can prove to her she’ll be ok. When he burns her apartment down, he is only wanting to give her a reason to need him, to move in with him so he can take care of her and she can see how much he loves her. He believes she is the one person on earth who would never hurt him, and, as the story will later reveal, he is wrong. He spends his whole life obsessing over her, even after he marries someone else, and this ensures he never has a real or intimate relationship with anyone. His obsession is his own protection, even as it leads to his undoing. He can’t truly trust anyone, and because of their experiences, neither can she.
Titles:
Man Eater
From Fucked-up to Free
Sukha My Dukkha
Comparables: I plan to spend more time reading comparables. This is a huge void for me.
Leslie Jamison Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
My femoir is similar to Jamison’s in terms of its honesty and some of its subject matter (divorce). Mine presses the ugly truth a little further, in cruder terms, and offers a bit more hope in the end.
Untamed, by Glennon Doyle
My femoir has some similar subject matter and style.
Hook Line: Gerl Dine, a Midwestern wife and mom, hates her husband and her fake life. Afraid she is doomed to be a man-hater forever, she faces down its roots - her own self-rejection and a secret past - and risks losing everything for the chance to fully inhabit herself.
Gerl Dine’s inner conflict is with herself. She hates her body and has been sabotaging her well being since childhood. Raised by unhappy women who scorn any woman who is sexually alive or selfish enough to be happy, Gerl Dine vows to be the first happy woman in her family. To do so, she must risk making choices for herself, but her mother abandons her for her small rebellion. Lost, she throws away all the rules and realizes too late how the rules were meant to protect her. Badly harmed and nearly killed, she stuffs her hate and her shame deep down and embarks on a life of pretending she is fine. She gets married but realizes that both self-loathing and its inversion, man-hating, is part of her inheritance, and she doesn’t know how to shake it. She tries harmless approaches to healing - medication, meditation, religion, art, but nothing seems to free her of her hatred. She feels the answer is outside of her—if she can get one person to know everything and still love her, she’ll be ok. She decides to be vulnerable with her husband and tell him everything, and his response is that he doesn’t want to know. She cares about him and wants a good life for her children, but her fury at a marriage where sex is required but emotional vulnerability is prohibited makes divorce inevitable. She aches for her past tormentor, because at least he knows what she knows; there is no secret required. She faces down this man who harmed her, fantasizing about a do-over where she can rewrite the story and show up differently. She thinks that if she can either defend herself well or fall in love with him, she can finally accept herself and be happy. The experience ends in disaster, and she is still left with the mystery of how to connect with and love her body and all its memories. She wants all of it to belong, but none of it is acceptable. Determined to heal at all costs, she will try anything, and a gay man grieving his impotence on the night before his death arrives with an opportunity for healing that requires Gerl Dine to silence all the judging women in her head. She misses her husband and the family they once were, but in order to be free, she has to continue to risk being true and hope she can bear the consequences. Claiming all that she is creates a complex blessing. Learning to love herself makes her love everyone else a lot better, but it means others may love her a lot less.
Setting
This story has its roots in the rural Midwest, a land where survival is a struggle. The soil is clay, studded with rocks, and there are no rules against poisoning the the creeks with discarded dishwashers, broken cars, and paint cans. Despite this, the beauty of this land prevails. Vines swallow up entire yards full of trash, studding them with purple morning glory. Fox tiptoe across the fields, birds sing. To survive as a woman, one must buck up and stay resilient in the face of harsh, age-old rules. In this environment, saturated with religious beliefs, social customs, and stereotypes about women and the female body, everyone earns a reputation for friendliness that belies the scorn tainting the very groundwater. Here, no one hates women more than women themselves. The message is, How Dare You Be Happier Than I Am. It is a land of fences, and the innocent groundhog who dares to frolic across the field will have its skull nailed to the fence post.
Part of the story is set in Kansas, where the vast space allows freedom but the wind prohibits any anchoring roots. The harsh gales hurl grit in one's eyes, and it is hard to see clearly. There is no sheltering tree, no forest in which one can hide. Everything is stripped down to its most vulnerable, and everything can be blown away.