Books
Season of the Rat
In Los Angeles, a rat skitters across a woman’s roof and into her psyche, prompting an obsessive investigation of her lost memories, a forgotten history of gay bars and group sex, socialist colonies and rent, rape, and the transgression of true romance. From the author of the cult classic, I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris, comes a mysterious meditation steeped in sex and the high style of Hollywood noir: Elizabeth Hall’s SEASON OF THE RAT.
Cover art by Tex Gresham
PRAISE FOR SEASON OF THE RAT
“Literary powerhouse in the making.” - Aiden Brown, X-RAY MAG
“Deeply researched, smart, insightful…only Elizabeth Hall could draw out the romantic, murine metaphor of the rat.” - Kristin Sanders, Full Stop
“With Season of the Rat, Elizabeth Hall has created a genuine marvel—a work that, like the creature in its title, defies easy categorization and that also, like the rat, demands our stunned attention. That a novella so small can contain so much is a colossal act of curiosity; that so much story can be located within a single rodent is an act of humanity no less curious.” - Travis Woods, Southwest Review
“I found solace in these pages.” - Brittany Ackerman, Write or Die
“Erotic and astute.” - Alina Pleskova, Zona Motel
“The romance of rat life is the romance of Elizabeth Hall’s arresting, rapturous Season of the Rat — a true billetdoux to animals, precarious communities, and reading as a way of being. Who else but Elizabeth Hall could bring such eroticism to ecocriticism or write sentences as lush and libidinous, carved and charmed as these? Hall is a singular noticer: rat laughter, bougainvillea spangles, leather chaps. I want to read with her always. This is a murine-sized masterpiece.” -JoAnna Novak, author of Contradiction Days and I Must Have You.
“There is a quiet, controlled dignity in Hall's writing. She is never pretentious, always precise, unexpected, and thoroughly thoughtful. Her voice comforts even when the subject chills. I didn't want this book to end.” - Charlotte Shane, author of An Honest Woman and Prostitute Laundry
“I'm terrified of rats, but I was still captivated by Season of the Rat—a hypnotic meditation on memory, obsession, and the ghosts that haunt Los Angeles. I may never buy into the romance of rat life, but I’m fully sold on Elizabeth Hall’s seductive, sun-bleached vision.” – Anna Dorn, author of Perfume and Pain
“Sprawling with ideas.” - Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Foglifter
REVIEWS AND PRESS
Ratcatching in the Ruins by Travis Woods, Southwest Review
Review by Ruby Zuckerman, The Whitney Review
DISPATCH: Season of the Rat by Elizabeth Hall, A Book Launch and Reading Presented by Cash 4 Gold Books and This Friday, Los Angeles by Allie Rowbottom, Zona Motel
I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris
Elizabeth Hall began writing I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris in the summer of 2010 after reading Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex. She was particularly struck by Laqueur’s bold assertion: “More words have been shed, I suspect, about the clitoris, than about any other organ, or at least, any organ its size.” How was it possible that Hall had been reading compulsively for years and never once stumbled upon this trove of prose devoted to the clit? If Lacquer’s claim was correct, where were all these “words”? And more: what did size have to do with it? Hall set out to find all that had been written about the clit past and present. As she soon discovered, the history of the clitoris is no ordinary tale; rather, its history is marked by the act of forgetting.
Cover art by Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
PRAISE FOR I HAVE DEVOTED MY LIFE TO THE CLIT
“An orgy of information…. At once sexy and scientifically compelling … delivering in small bites an investigation of the clit that is simultaneously a meditation on the myriad ways in which smallness hides power.” –The Rumpus
“Reading this book feels like coming…” –Maudlin House
“Let yourself yelp while reading…. Yeah, this is that kind of book” –Muzzle Magazine
“Freud, terra cotta cunts, hyenas, anatomists, and Acker, mixed with a certain slant of light on a windowsill and a leg thrown open invite us… Bawdy and beautiful” –Wendy C. Ortiz
“Gorgeous little book about a gorgeous little organ… Mines discourses as varied as sexology, plastic surgery, literature and feminism to produce an eye-opening compendium…. The ‘tender button’ finally gets its due” –Janet Sarbanes
“God this book is glorious…. You will learn and laugh and wonder why it took you so long to find this book”–Suzanne Scanlon
“Marvelously researched and sculpted…. Bulleted points rat-tat-tatting the patriarchy, strobing with pleasure”– Dodie Bellamy