Fantasies, or are they premonitions, of a great wave, an impending apocalypse, threaten to swamp a young woman trapped in a slowly curdling relationship. From the outside it all looks good—the casually elegant apartment, the cocktail parties, the impressive, creative friends—but for all her supposed freedom, her unhappiness means she’s not living up to her side of the bargain. Why, everyone asks, is this not enough?Four hundred years earlier, formidable, irascible Deborah Moody marries, is disappointed, is widowed, loses a child, loses everything, and flees England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She finds her fortune there, but if relying on a husband proved a mistake, independence doesn’t mean freedom from the dangerous vanities of men.Funny, cutting, and a savage indictment of the cheap consolations of meme-ified faux feminism, misplaced solidarity, and sacrifices for the supposed greater good, Cautery offers us two women (one based on a historical figure, one imagined) who share a final vision of true happiness—burning it all down and beginning again.
About the author
Maureen Shaughnessy is a writer and translator from Spanish. Her published translations include works by Belén López Peiró, Sara Gallardo, Hebe Uhart, and Nurit Kasztelan. Her translations have been featured in The Paris Review, Brick , World Literature Today, LALT, AGNI, WWB and Asymptote . In 2023, her translation of López Peiró’s Why Did You Come Back Every Summer received an English PEN Translates Award. Raised in Oregon, she now lives in Bariloche, Argentina.
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