Karen Finley is someone who’s work I have followed (and loved) ever since I first read the interview with her in Angry Women, that quinessential third wave text published by Re/Search Press in 1991. She has been seemingly laying low for the better part of a year after going on hiatus as a columnist to the Huffington Post.

Finley’s latest book is a satire of current American politics told as an illicit affair between Martha Stewert and George W. Bush and mimicking Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf. The book is based on a play Finley performed in New York in 2004. As in Finley’s earlier work, Living It Up, Adventures in Hyperdomesticity, Martha Stewert serves as the ultimate symbol of conservative femininity, acting out the mothering fantasies to Dubya’s damanaged little boy psyche.

While it ocassionally falls into potential nightmare material, (assisted by the drawings interspersed with the story) Kinley uses this effectively to create the ultimate parable for the current world order. Both influential leaders within their various worlds (political, domestic, economic) ruling and being ruled by their own oedipal complexes. A spoiled boy forever seeking his father’s approval seems to be the most effective portrayal of Dubya on offer (though I still don’t want to see him naked). Both are given a generous complexity for people who it is oh so easy to mock.

The story is based on a weekend in a hotel during the Republican convention and just before Stewart is due to begin her term for her insider trading conviction. George and Martha banter back and forth, have sex, argue and field calls from an ex-president. This all serves to shed light quite a lot of light on the current state of US (and global) politics.