Evelyn As

Christine Butterworth-McDermott's Evelyn As is a vivid, poetic account of the early life and career of late 19th and early 20th Century chorus girl, artists' model, and actress Evelyn Nesbit. These dynamic, fraught, and textural poems provide a stunning and heartbreaking portrait of a life of stardom, violence, scandal, and survival, weaving together everything from the Persephone myth and Little Red Riding Hood to Rapunzel and Snow White—not to mention also gaze theory, the sometimes (wildly complicated) transformative power of art, and the roles we all play both willingly and un-. At its heart, Evelyn As is a compelling, gripping, and tragic blockbuster of a book, simultaneously cinematic, awe inspiring, and crushing. —Matt Hart