Stunt

Eugenia Ledoux, the nine-year-old protagonist of Dey’s debut novel, fancies herself a tightrope walker, which turns out to be the least interesting thing about her. Eugenia also has synesthesia, a condition that jumbles her senses, causing her to experience light as sound, taste as touch, and so on. Eugenia wakes up one morning to find her father gone and her heartbroken self left behind with her mother, Mink, and her sister, the gorgeous but tragic Immaculata.

When Mink vanishes, too, Eugenia and Immaculata literally double in age overnight. Immaculata transforms into a beautiful giant and settles in at home. Eugenia, who remains a runt, sets off to track down her father. From the outset it’s clear why Eugenia would miss her father so: He’s full of magic and sass and everything that would make a child long for a parent, which just compounds the pain of her search for a man self-involved enough to abandon his family.

Stunt asks a lot of a reader. Prepare for a monumental suspension of disbelief and a generous acceptance of the surreal and absurd—and prepare to receive a lot in return. Dey uses Eugenia’s synesthesia to great advantage, imbuing the text with cross sights and smells, feelings and colors, tastes and touch. The reader takes a warm bath in the sensory world of Eugenia.

A surreal coming-of-age novel, Stunt reminds us of Katherine Dunn’s classic, Geek Love. It walks the tightrope, like Eugenia herself, between fantasy and reality, joyous and melancholic. Dey has created a world that defies definition and, in its deeply weird and totally beautiful storytelling, celebrates flights of imagination.