Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream!

Book excerpt: Fiction. "Frieda, the narrator and eponymous "daughter," opens the novel, speaking as a fetus from an Edenic state of unbounded freedom and perception in which she can "create anything"...philosophical brilliance and surreal humor in Chapman's prose amply reward the reader's attention"--Publishers Weekly. "As we trip through Frieda's life and her forays into art, love, politics, self-actualization, and self-destruction, thematic justice seems to be among the least of Chapman's concerns. It is Chapman's ongoing experiment in his fiction--his exploration of the serious limitations on our ability to communicate in a largely inarticulate culture that has become increasingly obsessed with violence, veneer, and volume--that weighs most heavily"--Review of Contemporary Fiction.