Revenge of the Scapegoat

Synopsis

Iris is an adjunct professor at an urban arts college, living with chronic rheumatoid arthritis and the quiet exhaustion of academic precarity. When she unexpectedly receives a bundle of letters her father wrote to her as a teenager—letters filled with blame, manipulation, and emotional cruelty—old wounds are violently reopened. Overwhelmed by physical pain and the weight of the past, she flees to the countryside, where reality begins to dissolve into a bizarre landscape populated by talking body parts, fascist cattle, surreal works of art, and absurd encounters that are as hilarious as they are unsettling.

Wildly inventive, fiercely intelligent, and darkly comic, Bad Houses transforms personal trauma into dazzling satire. Blending autobiography, fantasy, and philosophical wit, Caren Beilin skewers academia, the medical establishment, the contemporary art world, and inherited family dysfunction while asking how we survive the stories others insist on telling about us.

About the Author

Caren Beilin is an American novelist, essayist, and critic whose work explores chronic illness, feminism, family, and experimental literature. She is the author of Blackfishing the IUD and Revenge of the Scapegoat, and is celebrated for her fearless, genre-defying writing and singular literary voice.

Publisher
Dorothy, a publishing project

Publication Date
November 19, 2024

Format
Paperback

Pages
208

Subjects
Literary Fiction · Experimental Fiction · Satire · Contemporary Fiction

ISBN
9781948980074