Cautery

The difficulty of being a woman in 21st-century Barcelona and 17th-century Massachusetts might only be a few hundred years.

Fantasies, or are they premonitions, of a great wave, an impending apocalypse, threaten to swamp a young woman trapped in a slowly curdling relationship. From the outside it all looks good – the casually elegant apartment, the cocktail parties, the impressive, creative friends – but for all her supposed freedom, her unhappiness means she’s not living up to her side of the bargain. Why, everyone asks, is this not enough?Four hundred years earlier, formidable, irascible Deborah Moody marries, is disappointed, is widowed, loses a child, loses everything, and flees England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She finds her fortune there, but if relying on a husband proved a mistake, independence doesn’t mean freedom from the dangerous vanities of men.Funny, cutting, and a savage indictment of the cheap consolations of meme-ified faux feminism, misplaced solidarity, and sacrifices for the supposed greater good, Cautery offers us two women (one based on a historical figure, one imagined) who share a final vision of true happiness – burning it all down and beginning again.