ON “MAKING ODDKIN” IN SARA BAUME’S SPILL SIMMER FALTER WITHER
ON “MAKING ODDKIN” IN SARA BAUME’S SPILL SIMMER FALTER WITHER

Summary/Abstract: On “Making Oddkin” in Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither. This study argues that in its figuration of the protagonist’s complex engagement with the dog that enables him to articulate his autobiographical self, Sara Baume’s 2015 novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither adopts a critical posthumanist stance on the abyssal rift conventionally understood to separate human and non-human animals. Tapping the potential for dismantling the anthropocentric mindset, the odd kinship Ray forms with One Eye becomes a way of disrupting essentialist conceptions of selfhood and articulating alliances that catalyse the narrator’s reconciliation with personal trauma and his ethically responsible repositioning in the world at large.

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