"The best kind of gossip": Aurora Mattia’s "The Fifth Wound"
By Joanna Acevedo
To say that Aurora Mattia’s The Fifth Wound is not easily accessible to readers is to do it an injustice—the prose is winding, curving, explosive, and at times, completely unreadable. But that’s the beauty of reading this book: getting lost in its delicious sentences as they turn and burn, coming to surprising and wonderful conclusions.
Calling this a love story would be too simple. This is a volatile, driven novel, exploring queer and trans relationships with both intellectual and emotional vigor. “My favorite kind of literature is gossip. My second favorite is prayer,” says the narrator early in the book.
And the book does feel like the best kind of gossip—a whisper in the ear from a best friend, an outpouring of stream-of-consciousness which overtakes, overwhelms, and fascinates. In terms of prayer, Mattia has a rhythmic, almost holy way of speaking at times, as if some greater power is speaking through her. She has created a new way of speaking through both autofiction and more traditional literature, a new order of communication.
The novel begins with this pithy introduction of our narrator: “Call me Aurora, or call me @silicone_angel. But you have to promise not to fall in love with me. If this is a testament, it is not good news: instead of revelation, I give reverb.” But it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with Aurora, whose observations about the world come fast and furious, and it’s hard not to feel moved by her experiences with transphobic violence, about which she seems powerfully detached, almost numb.
She speaks extremely candidly about both her struggles with mental health and her hospitalizations, with surprising tenderness and exceptional language. She says, “The first time I wore lipstick I wore it as a wound. Later I wore it on my lips as if to say: what if I were beautiful? But lipstick never forgot its first meaning: instead of a razor blade.” The book is full of moments like this—chilling observations which allow us to slip into her consciousness, grounding us in the wake of more complex sentences, seemingly random associations, and her myriad of relationships, such as the one with her on again, off again boyfriend Ezekial.
Aurora is simultaneously obsessed and confused by Ezekiel. She certainly longs for him. In a section where they reunite after several years apart, he questions her about their sexual tension. Upset, she says:
He had come to me at midnight, had sung like a distant echo, had led me to a waterfall and dissolved therein at dawn.
Yet another hall of mirrors: when I reach out for you, I touch myself.
Their love story is complicated by the larger forces that are working against them—transphobia, other lovers, inter-dimensionality—and as they move in each other’s orbits, the reader finds themselves rooting for these two lovers, regardless of how complex their relationship has been in the past.
By untangling the threads that have pulled them together, Aurora and Ezekiel explore the boundaries of intimacy, or lack thereof, in a often sexy, layered, and tender way. Aurora is looking for beauty in both her sentences and her relationships: she’s trying to be beautiful herself, and is working on creating beauty out of thin air with her prose. Ezekiel represents this quest. Through her prose, she builds a version of their relationship which is beautiful to read and experience.
The Fifth Wound has many intertextual elements, including extensive footnotes, random Chinese characters worked into the text, text messages, and even images and photographs, which add to the incredible density of the prose. The prose itself is gorgeous and moving, with multiple recurring themes such as wounds, mouths, and female beauty, all of which come together to create a stunning and visceral narrative.
During one of her episodes of self-injury, Aurora says, “Apparently my wound was a mouth. Blood is an opaque language. Everything it says is vital and far too decadent.” This re-imagining of a traumatic experience is a perfect example of Mattia’s ability to create beauty out of the darkness. She is a master of revising her own life and blending it into a crafted, spectacular story which is a pleasure to read and experience.
Although this novel may be somewhat intimidating due to the tightness of its prose, the huge scope of its content, and the kaleidoscopic nature of its worldview, it is full of wonderful lines, clever observations, and a whirlwind story which will captivate readers of all types. Mattia’s candidness, energy, and her ability to surprise all make this book into a genuinely engaging and pleasurable read that’s easy to get lost in.
Readers interested in queer literature in particular shouldn’t miss this book. It’s clear that Mattia has left her stamp on the literary world.. Considering her humor, brilliantly conversational voice, and intensely intelligent novel Mattia’s debut isn’t one to forget.