MixedThe RumpusImagine literally unpacking et cetera. This is what Dutton’s experimental novel, Sprawl, aspires to do. Sprawl is a double entendre—written in single sentences with no paragraph breaks whatsoever, its prose affects a sprawling internal monologue of a female protagonist; the title also locates the novel in the suburbs, which, like et cetera, could go on forever ... By trafficking in the narrator’s perceptions, the author shows storytelling to be a self-reflexive process of consciousness—the desire to construct narrative trumps even the absence of plot. If you read fiction for rich character development, a twisting-turning storyline, or closure, Sprawl is an unlikely choice. Dutton’s aim is more aesthetic than narrative: to show these all-too-familiar surroundings with startlingly new eyes. Tireless lists of the domestic environment, the vacuousness of suburban sprawl, the tension between extreme interiority and exteriority—these compel the reader of Sprawl, though at times the repetition is numbing.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
