{"product_id":"gaudy-bauble-by-isabel-waidner","title":"‘Gaudy Bauble’ by Isabel Waidner","description":"\u003ch4 dir=\"auto\"\u003eIsabel Waidner’s first novel is a short, ferocious and deliciously weird work of queer experimental fiction that won't stop thrashing.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eDetectives, anti-drag kings, trans armies, altered bodies, improbable animals, television production and art-world detritus collide inside a language. Waidner borrows from avant-garde writing, queer theory, camp, performance and slapstick, but the result never really settles into any of them. Even the book’s epigraphs—from Donna Haraway and Jack Spicer—announce the problem early: who or what gets counted as an actor, a body, a subject, a possible life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eThe novel’s political imagination comes through its refusal of stable categories. Gender, species, identity and narrative authority are treated as things continually being assembled and interfered with rather than simply represented. Characters switch registers and forms; invented cultural artefacts begin generating consequences of their own; satire keeps mutating, but beneath the maximal silliness is a serious proposition about cultural power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003eA genuinely odd little landmark of the contemporary queer avant-garde, and the beginning of the fictional body of work that would later include \u003cem\u003eWe Are Made of Diamond Stuff\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eSterling Karat Gold\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eCorey Fah Does Social Mobility\u003c\/em\u003e. Waidner lists \u003cem\u003eGaudy Bauble\u003c\/em\u003e as their 2017 debut novel. \u003cspan class=\"contents\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"auto\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDostoyevsky Wannabe Originals, 2017. First edition. Paperback. Light shelf and handling wear to covers, with slight rubbing and minor corner wear. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Very good condition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46332386803795,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/womenintranslation-2026-09-17T133116.458.png?v=1789616067","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/gaudy-bauble-by-isabel-waidner","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}