Casey Bell: Glass Eel, Kartoniert / Broschiert

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Exploring the power of female friendships in times of despair

In the near-future United States, abortion is criminalized. Women are not only stripped of bodily autonomy but are also arrested and put through various punishments, including a Christian fundamentalist rehabilitation program and manual labor. Thrown together in this harrowing corrections process, two women, E and M, form a deep bond. Rippling through time and space, Glass Eel illuminates an imminent nightmare while exploring the unbreakable force of female friendship in times of despair.

Before serving their sentences, E is a romantic who is prone to vivid, maladaptive daydreaming, and M is an empiricist studying to become a marine biologist. Isolated by her devout mother, E turns inward, developing a passion for poetry and myth. At the exact wrong time, she becomes involved with a married man. When E becomes pregnant, he gaslights her, denying their entire relationship. M, while working as a part-time performer at an underwater mermaid theater, carries the heavy responsibility of being the sole provider for her sick mother. One night, she reluctantly accompanies her roommate to a party where she's raped. Both E and M make the difficult decision to terminate their pregnancies and are eventually arrested for it.

Brought together to serve their sentences, E and M painstakingly labor underground to unclog the Chicago sewers at night. By day, they wander the bleak shore of a radioactive industrial lake, home to mysterious unearthly creatures. E and M unravel psychologically, desperate to cope with their impossible new reality as they grasp at their last real connection---their friendship---to make it through this dystopian time. Glass Eel explores the bond between E and M to show how people hold each other together when everything feels like it is falling apart.