Lina was once a woman in one piece. Now, she is incised with the words her father, her husband, and her son cannot say—and with the words that replace their absences. Told in twenty-six portions, 26 Abductions offers no avenues of escape. Instead, Sonenberg catalogues the ways in which the body, like a language, attempts to hold the triple blows of childhood, motherhood, and marriage.

Everything in our lives can be taken away, abducted, but the story of your life is how you deal with the loss. Using language and images traced from a turn-of-the-century medical textbook, Sonenberg’s book is innovative, poignant, and will take away everything about literature you thought you knew.

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