Their backstory is skilfully meshed with a scene at a cocktail party given by a wealthy donor at the hospital where Jake works. When therapy unearths an abusive past, Sheila’s recovery and subsequent sexual awakening seems centred on anyone but her husband. A honeymoon in Paris takes a ferocious turn as Sheila rounds on Jake, "making him feel like a rapist". Jake was initially enticed by Sheila's conservative Christian upbringing and the prospect of taking her virginity, bit frustrations mount when sex is not forthcoming after marriage. The title story, Virgin, which won the Paris Review's 2011 George Plimpton Award for Fiction, sees a young husband grapple with the deterioration of his marriage. In Virgin and Other Stories, Christian fervour clashes with child sexuality, histories of abuse are relived by victims as a form of therapy, and commonplace situations and rites – funerals, first dates, cocktail parties, piano lessons – turn perverse and menacing in the hands of a talented young writer. The strange scenarios of Southern Gothic fiction are alive and unwell in April Ayers Lawson's stirring debut collection.
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