![]() ![]() Ellmann is tormented by the “conspiratorial manoeuvrings” of inanimate objects. It begins gently enough with the title essay, one of just three not to have already been published elsewhere. She’s out to foment revolution, and this book is nothing less than a manifesto. As she explains: “In times of pestilence, my fancy turns to shticks.” Goofiness notwithstanding, Ellmann is complaining only to the extent that the sans-culottes grumbled about goings-on at Versailles. Aimed at everything from air travel to zips, genre writing to men (above all, men), her ire is matched only by an irrepressible comic impulse, from which bubbles forth kitsch puns, wisecracking whimsy and one-liners both bawdy and venomous. ![]() And complain she does, though the verb barely seems adequate for the atrabilious, freewheeling fury that spills from its pages. “L et’s complain”, exhorts Lucy Ellmann in a preface to her first essay collection, Things Are Against Us. ![]()
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