The Back COver

Hannah Stephenson

Stunt, Claudia Dey

“The trick is to have a stunt that no one else can perform,” three characters in Claudia Dey’s first novel declare.  Stunt is indeed brazenly unique, thanks to its absurd plot enacted by strangely spectacular characters.  The novel focuses on Eugenia Ledoux (nicknamed “Stunt” by her father, due to her fearlessness and agility) and her weirdly charming, Addams-esque family.  The Ledoux family is composed of Mink, Eugenia’s mother, a gorgeous ex-performance artist and B-movie actress; Eugenia’s creepy and beautiful sister Immaculata, older than Eugenia by only six months; and Sheb, Eugenia’s father, a wacky portraitist obsessed with levitation and outer space. 

The novel is set in motion when Sheb disappears, leaving a cryptic message saying he has “gone to save the world.”  Eugenia embarks on a mission to find Sheb, searching for him in a world where “everyone...appears shipwrecked...collapsed with scurvy.”  Dey’s prose is evocative, exhilarating, relentless; she is a master of unusual verbs (“Thick drops of black Jackson-Pollock her skin”) and memorable names (such as “Skinny Selene Valadan,” “Tuberculosis Flo,” and “I.I. Finbar Me the Three”).

Stunt begs, even assumes, the reader’s suspension of disbelief.  The beginning of the novel, though zany, appears to be literal; the first sections of the book are absurd but semi-plausible.  After that, reality begins to unravel: Eugenia and Immaculata inexplicably age from 9 to 18 in one night; Eugenia has a love affair with a man living in a houseboat and seeks training from tightrope walker and ancestor I.I. Finbar Me the Three.  The end of the novel is still enjoyable, but can leave you perplexed.  Fraught with idiosyncratic characters and Dey’s daredevil narration, Stunt proves to be unique and undaunted.