"This is a long overdue exploration of Dorothea Tannings surrealist novel Chasm: A Weekend, a gothic narrative that took the artist fifty-seven years to complete. McAras unique stratigraphic theoretical reading of the text utilises geological and archaeological metaphors to excavate its many layers of meaning. This study serves as an exemplar of how to achieve a more integrated contextualisation when dealing with the visual and textual output of certain surrealist artists, thus enabling a greater understanding of how one inextricably informs the other."
--Susan L. Aberth, Bard College
"In A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tannings Chasm, Catriona McAra fills a major gap in studies on surrealism by exploring the intriguing complexity of Tannings art through repositioning Tannings unjustly neglected literary writing at the heart of her creative oeuvre. ...In her book Catriona McAra skillfully combines the playful curiosity and scientific scrutiny of a botanist while guiding us on an exquisite image/textual tour in the labyrinthine garden of Tannings art and life. Her critically self-conscious, re-embodied, demythologized perspective plants seeds of thought in the minds of arts scholars and aficionados alike."
--Americana, E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary