Gayl Jones was a major figure in 20th century Black literature, publishing her first novel, Corregidora, in 1975, and continuing to write novels and short stories until her husband, who was a fugitive from justice for over a decade, sent a bomb threat to a local hospital and then killed himself in a standoff with police. Jones then withdrew from public life and writing for 23 years before returning with the 2021 novel Palmares, which was one of the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, losing to one of the worst winners in the award’s history (The Netanyahus).
Jones returned last year with a short novel, The Unicorn Woman, that also made the list of finalists for the Pulitzer, losing out this time to one of the best winners in the award’s history (Percival Everett’s James). The Unicorn Woman is a wisp of a tale that isn’t about the title character at all, if she even exists, but follows a Black WWII veteran named Buddy Ray Guy who becomes obsessed with the woman after seeing her at a carnival freak show, altering the course of his life.
Buddy can’t get the image of the woman, whom he finds unspeakably beautiful to the point of questioning not whether her horn is real, but whether she is a real person, out of his head, and spends much of his itinerant life afterwards chasing her, either literally or just metaphorically. His relationships with other women do not last, in large part because he is still obsessed with her – or the idea of her, of some sort of unrealistic, unattainable perfection that lodges in his mind and doesn’t leave enough room for a real romantic relationship. He repairs tractors as an irregular job, but moves around the country, sometimes chasing word that the Unicorn Woman is appearing in this city or that one, but more often seeming to move without purpose.
There’s just so little to this novel – aside from some dense prose that contradicts the wispiness of the story – that it lacks the tangible hooks to connect you to the story. There are side characters here and there, but none has much depth or even exposition time; there’s mention of one, a woman named Kate who worked on the tractors during the war but lost her job when the soldiers returned, and who refused to take a clerical or other lesser job. Her story might have made a better novel, and it certainly would have added some depth to this one.
Instead, it’s a work of metaphor and symbol more than it is a conventional novel, the sort of book that works better in a literature class than it does on your night stand, like Pedro Páramo or The Unconsoled, or maybe even The Vegetarian. The Unicorn Woman is on display to be seen, judged, and ogled by the world, but appears to have no agency or even an identity independent of her horn. Her value is what someone else can extract from her. She doesn’t exist as a character in the novel, so by default she must stand for something or someone; my interpretation is that she stands for all women, objectified, used, and discarded by the men in our society. Buddy doesn’t fare much better, though, as he’s returned from war to find a country that doesn’t have a place for him. Even is name is generic, as if Jones wanted to be sure we saw him as some sort of faceless everyman.
It’s probably clear that I wasn’t impressed by The Unicorn Woman, as it just seems like such a meager work to take the honor of one of the three (four) best American novels of its year. It’s possible this was just another way to honor Jones herself and her return to writing. I just don’t think of awards that way; this isn’t a lifetime achievement award, but an award for a specific book. There may be layers of meaning here I just didn’t get. The story itself wasn’t strong enough to sustain the rest of the book for me.
It’s still better than Mice 1961, though.
Next up: I’m reading one of the Miles Vorkosigan novels, Brothers in Arms, which I think is the only one I hadn’t read from the time period where his alter ego, Admiral Naismith, is part of the stories.
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