Fiction: literary and general non-genre
Interlink Books Lusaka Punk and Other Stories: The Caine Prize
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£14.41
Interlink Books Dreams of Maryam Tair: Blue Boots and Orange
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£15.30
Interlink Books Ali and His Russian Mother
Book SynopsisA fresh, daring voice in arabic literature today. Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and his Russian Mother is at once an ordinary and extraordinary story of two young people in Lebanon. At the outbreak of the July War in 2006, the novel’s unnamed young protagonist reconnects with her childhood friend and develops a little crush on him, as they flee the bombs unleashed upon their country by Israel. Displaced, along with a million others across the country, she and her Russian mother have joined an evacuation for Russian citizens, when she again meets up with Ali, her former schoolmate from the South, who also has a Russian (Ukrainian) mother. As the two friends reunite, chat, and bond during a harrowing bus caravan across the Syrian border to Lattakia, en route to Moscow, Chreiteh’s unique, comic sense of the absurd speaks to contradictions faced by a young generation in Lebanon now, sounding out taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national identities. Carrying Russian passports like their mothers—both of whom married Lebanese men and settled there—they are forced to reflect upon their choices, and lack of them, in a country that is yet again being torn apart by violent conflict. Like Chreiteh’s acclaimed first novel, Always Coca-Cola, this story employs deceptively simple language and style to push the boundaries of what can be talked about in Arabic fiction. Again focused on the preoccupations of young people and their hopes for the future, Ali and his Russian Mother represents a fresh, daring voice in Arabic literature today.
£11.39
Interlink Books The Honey
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£11.66
Clockroot Books Rien Ne Va Plus
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£13.50
Clockroot Books Landscape with Dog
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£12.75
Clockroot Books Geometry of God
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£15.30
Interlink Books A Summer Without Dawn: An Armenian Epic
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£18.00
Interlink Books The Calligrapher's Secret
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£17.00
Interlink Books Specters
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£13.50
Interlink Books Swallow
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£13.50
Clockroot Books Life and Memoirs of Doctor Pi and Other Stories
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£11.70
Clockroot Books The Sleepwalker
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£13.60
Clockroot Books Lunar Savings Time
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£12.75
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc So Good In Black
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£15.29
Interlink Books Sarmada
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£13.50
Interlink Books The House of Jasmine
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£12.75
Interlink Books A Bit of Difference
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£20.00
Clockroot Books Thinner Than Skin
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£15.30
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc Flying Carpets
Book SynopsisFlying Carpets is a story collection in the grand tradition of Arab storytelling. In it, Habra masterfully waves her writing wand and takes us on a journey as we read about people and places far away and encounter temples and mountain villages, gliding boats and fragrant kitchens, flaming fish and rich tapestries.
£9.99
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc A Bit of Difference
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£12.74
Interlink Books How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary
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£12.75
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc Sherazade
Book SynopsisSHERAZADE, AGED 17, DARK CURLY HAIR, GREEN EYES, MISSING Sherazade is seventeen, Algerian, and a ¬runaway in Paris. Although she has no morals, no scruples, no politics, no apparent emotional depth and little education, Sherazade remains curiously unattached but innocent in the city''s underworld of drop-outs, outcasts, political activists and junkies. With honesty and lyricism this novel exposes the various issues that affect a young woman living in a city which is both sophisticated and provincial, liberal and conservative, tolerant and prejudiced. In Paris, Sherazade is pursued by Julian, the son of French-Algerians who is an ardent Arabist. Pigeon-holed by Julian into the ¬traditional exotic mold, Sherazade endeavors to create her own definition of Algerian ¬femininity and in doing so breaks down conventions and stereotypes. It is Julian''s obsession with her that spurs her on to self-discovery and to make decisions about her future. Sherazade is about a young woman haunted by her Algerian past. It is a powerful account of a person who searches for her true identity but is caught between worlds—Africa and Europe, her parents’ and her own, colony and capital. Ultimately it is an ¬account of possession, identity and the realities of urban life today and what can happen when society fails to acknowledge its younger generations.
£13.04
Interlink Publishing Group, Inc The Book of the Sultan's Seal: Strange Incidents
Book SynopsisA PROFOUNDLY ORIGINAL DEBUT FROM HIGHLY ACCLAIMED EGYPTIAN WRITER Youssef Rakha’s extraordinary The Book of the Sultan’s Seal was published less than two weeks after then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, following mass protests, in February 2011. It’s hard to imagine a debut novel of greater urgency or more thrilling innovation. Modeled on a medieval Arabic manuscript in the form of a letter addressed to the writer’s friend, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal is made up of nine chapters, each centered on a drive our hero, Mustafa Çorbaci, takes around greater Cairo in the spring of 2007. Together these create a portrait of Cairo, city of post-9/11 Islam. In a series of dreams and visions, Mustafa Çorbaci encounters the spirit of the last Ottoman sultan and embarks on a mission the sultan assigns him. Çorbaci’s trials shed light on the contemporary Arab Muslim’s desperation for a sense of identity: Sultan’s Seal is both a suspenseful, erotic, riotous novel and an examination of accounts of Muslim demise. The way to a renaissance, Çorbaci’s journeys lead us to see, may have less to do with dogma and jihad than with love poetry, calligraphy, and the cultural diversity and richness within Islam. With his first novel, Rakha has created a language truly all his own—an achievement that has earned international acclaim. This profoundly original work both retells canonical Arabic classics and offers a new version of “middle Arabic,” in which the formal meets the vernacular. Now finally in English, in Paul Starkey’s masterful translation, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal will astonish new readers around the world.
£14.24
Ivan R Dee, Inc Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas
Book SynopsisThese artful new translations of nine of Schnitzler's most important stories and novellas reinforce the Viennese author's remarkable achievement.Trade ReviewSimply masterful...These clear, uncluttered translations are dreamlike. * The Review of Higher Education *Startlingly...life's universal themes are all here: the craving for erotic fulfillment, the fragility of love, the yearning for wealth, and the abruptness of death...these stories are rock-solid. * Publishers Weekly *One of the most distinctive and compelling voices of the early modernist movement is heard again in this elegant collection of nine urbane, perversely comic, deeply disturbing stories. * Kirkus *Margret Schaefer's fresh translation of nine stories and novellas brings most back into print for the first time in decades. * The Dallas Morning News *Table of ContentsPart 1 Foreword vii Part 2 Night Games 3 Part 3 The Dead Are Silent 83 Part 4 Blind Geronimo and His Brother 101 Part 5 A Farewell 125 Part 6 The Second 141 Part 7 Baron von Leisenbohg's Destiny 161 Part 8 The Widower 179 Part 9 Death of a Bachelor 190 Part 10 Dream Story 202
£17.99
Coffee House Press One Thing That Can Save Us
Book Synopsis"These well-crafted short-short stories will appeal to the types of busy-busy adults who give the volume its energy."--Kirkus Review "Silesky makes us realize that the seemingly inconsequential fragments of any life, even when randomly observed, can add up to a disturbing whole."--Los Angeles Reader
£7.99
Coffee House Press The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies
Book Synopsis"There's nothing so fascinates people as freaks." - Myrtle Perkins, the bearded lady.
£9.99
Coffee House Press Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul
Book SynopsisA "once-in-a-lifetime book."—St. Paul Pioneer Press For six months, residents of St. Paul gathered at a dozen public libraries and shared their memories, anecdotes, and histories with four outstanding Minnesota writers. The result of this nationally unique collaborative project is a beautifully realized book that weaves the (mostly) true stories into (mostly) fictional ones, spans the century, and captures the spirit of a city and its people. The 12 chapters, grown from the stories told at the 12 branch libraries, are as diverse in style and content as the community from which they sprang—from war to friendship and fire to fertility, these stories are tied together by the urban landscape itself.
£9.32
Coffee House Press Lunar Follies
Book Synopsis1. Gilbert Sorrentino will appear on Michael Silverblatt's "Bookworm" in fall 2004 to discuss his latest collection of stories and preview Lunar Follies. 2. As with Sorrentino's last two books, we expect extensive review coverage and continued growth in his fan base of independent booksellers, respected critics, and hip, younger readers. 3. A close friend to the late Hubert Selby Jr., teacher of Jeffrey Eugenides, and artistically grouped with Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, Sorrentino is a true elder stateman of American literature. 4. Good cross-over potential for museum stores and art publications.
£9.99
Coffee House Press Garner
Book Synopsis“An elegant, luminous, moving work of lyric prose. Every page shimmers.”—Carole Maso “Fiercely imagined, alive with incandescent imagery, Kirstin Allio’s Garner is a memorable debut.”—John Burnham Schwartz Landlocked, sail-shaped Garner, New Hampshire, is a town delineated by its Puritan ethics and its “Live Free or Die” mentality. Like the forbidding landscape of Wharton’s Ethan Frome, this New England outpost keeps its secrets and shapes its inhabitants. Frances Giddens, a spirited, elusive girl born at the dawn of the twentieth century and now approaching womanhood, moves through the forests and rivers that mark Garner’s borders as easily as she befriends its stoic residents. In the summer of 1925, with Garner’s economic prospects in decline, a group of wealthy New Yorkers descends on the Giddens farm for summer leisure. Even as Frances is drawn to the romance the newcomers represent, darker forces are unleashed. When her body is found in rain-swollen Blood Brook, this deeply private community begins to unravel. Garner chronicles the mystery of Frances’ sudden death and the demise of a picture-perfect New England town threatened by a new century. Allio’s beautiful, atmospheric prose reveals the town’s hidden history and the fierce longings locked in the hearts of its citizens. “Bounded by her trees was the new England,” muses the postman and local historian. “It is said that if one had the gossamer soul of an angel and wings of an artist’s weave, one might pass from Maine to Rhode Island, crown to green crown, and o’er New Hampshire . . . Tree to tree, one might travel . . .” But some may never leave. Kirstin Allio has taught creative writing at Brown University and holds degrees from Brown and New York University. Born in Maine, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and sons. This is her first novel.
£10.99
Coffee House Press The Exquisite
Book SynopsisIf Tarantino and Lynch fans, Lost and Twilight Zone viewers read deeply, then Laird Hunt would be their hero. His writing is full of sincerity, yet stylishly opaque, and his cultural and historical references are both pop and obscure. Like Auster and Lethem before him, Hunt’s reputation has ignited first in Europe and, like the work of Umberto Eco and Arturo Perez-Reverte, this novel is steeped in mystery, art, madness, and allusions to the contemporary consequences of historical decisions. He is a literary genre-bender of the first order and The Exquisite should solidify his reputation both here and abroad. Hunt’s work is already being taught in contemporary fiction classes and this book should find its way onto a number of course adoption lists.
£12.34
Coffee House Press The Cry of the Sloth
Book SynopsisLiving on a diet of fried Spam, vodka, sardines, cupcakes, and Southern Comfort, Andrew Whittaker is slowly being sucked into the morass of middle age. A negligent landlord, small-time literary journal editor, and aspiring novelist, he isquite literally authoring his own downfall. From his letters, diary entries, and fragments of fiction, to grocery lists and posted signs, this novel is a collection of everything Whittaker commits to paper over the course of four critical months. Beginning in July, during the economic hardships of the Nixon era, we witness our hero hounded by tenants and creditors, harassed by a loathsome local arts group, and tormented by his ex-wife. Determined to redeem his failures and eviscerate his enemies, Whittaker hatches a grand plan. But as winter nears, his difficulties accumulate, and the disorder of his life threatens to overwhelm him. As his hold on reality weakens and his schemes grow wilder, his self-image as a placid and slow-moving sloth evolves into that of a bizarre and frantic creature driven mad by solitude. In this tragicomic portrait of a literary life, Sam Savage proves that all the evidence is in the writing, that all the world is, indeed, a stage, and that escape from the mind’s prison requires a command performance.
£13.23
Coffee House Press Ray of the Star
Book SynopsisA tender love story related in the dark, stylish noir of continental cinema and overlaid with a patina of Surrealism, this is also a mediation about how we cope with unimaginable tragedy (like those of the main characters, one of whom lost their entire family and the other who lost a lover to unspeakable violence) and how we battle the demons that accompany it. The main character describes the buildings of this Barcelona-like, nameless city as “designed by the sort of visionary / crackpot who every generation or so arises in great metropolises and pulls fistfuls of the future out of his pockets and smears them all over the present.” The same could be said of Laird Hunt, a visionary writer, whose work, like Antoni Gaudí’s architecture, heralds the future. Laird Hunt has developed a tech-savvy cult following and is a favorite among literary bloggers. A reading from his debut novel was one of the first live, literary web casts, and the promotion for his previous book included an official filmed trailer (viewable at YouTube) and a video, shot by lit blogger Bud Parr (viewable at Chekov’s Mistress). For this novel, the main characters will be on Twitter and we’ll do some Facebook promotion. Theater students will also film reenactments from the novel for broadcast on YouTube.
£10.99
Coffee House Press Drowning Tucson
Book SynopsisA brilliant writer of place and character, Morales is also a fast-paced and finely-tuned stylist, delivering deeply emotional stories with “ripped-from-the-headlines” resonance. If ever there was a “writer to watch,” he’s it—the third of six children, Morales is a young, media-savvy author who has lived the stories he tells—from growing up in a tough Tucson neighborhood to putting his first set of “brand new” school clothes on layaway with the money he earned from his boyhood paper route, and from becoming a father at age eighteen to becoming the first member of his immediate family to graduate from college. A few of the chapters from this novel appeared in a 2008 chapbook published by Notre Dame’s Momotombo Press. The collection received rave reviews in academic circles and the Latino community, where the novel is eagerly anticipated.
£11.99
Coffee House Press Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder
Book SynopsisTitled after the US Air Force song, this engaging debut explores the legacy of the Greatest Generation from the perspective of Generation Y, the fallout of war through the eyes of a pacifist, and the enduring human desire for love, adventure, truth, and understanding. Pensive in the wake of 9/11, a young man—our “correspondent between the past and the present”—launches a mission to reunite his beloved grandfather, an American bombardier, with Luddie, the woman who saved him during WWII. Armed only with the address on the back of an old photograph and his grandfather’s memories, the young man begins writing letters to Luddie. Undaunted by her lack of response, the narrator travels to Poland with his girlfriend and grandfather. As they come closer to finding the site where the bombardier was shot down, the letters to Luddie become more personal and the saga of a family with a long and storied history emerges. Beautifully orchestrated and eloquently original, each sentence slowly builds upon the next in a charming style both poetic and engrossing. A tale of soldiers and saviors, of burning and bombing, of fathers and sons and brothers and lovers, this is also the story of what we find when we dare to revisit the past. Born in Iowa in 1979, Travis Nichols now lives in Chicago. An editor at the Poetry Foundation, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Believer, Details, Paste, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and The Stranger. Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is his first novel.Trade ReviewA rewarding experience. [Nichols’] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates through the book.”Chicago Sun-Times Nichols pulls the readers in . . . with breathtaking immediacy. . . . Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting.”Minneapolis Star Tribune Nichols handles beautifully the hidden meanings in old family tales heard a hundred times . . . the novel often reads like a piece of music that is wonderfully original.”Publishers Weekly A dramatically off-kilter debut novel about wars and the men who fight them . . . We see the Bombardier, an elderly Rotarian and former mayor of a small Midwestern town, rediscovering his youthful memories. His grandson's bewilderment over what to do about the 9/11 attacks highlights the differences between then and now. There's a lot of meaty material here.”Kirkus Travis Nichols locates the story in history, the pistol in epistolary. This is crushingly great, altogether original debut that reads like an incantation. I dare you to stop reading.”Ed Park This is a beautiful crackpot’s history of America. Travis Nichols takes us on a godly road trip through tobacco, love, and Boom Boom, landing us profoundly still at the world’s loneliest tourist trap. It’s a curious animal version of all those I was looking for’ books because here the animal (the writing) actually changes when it reaches its destination. And happily Off We Go is also a book about a man loving women: A toast,’ I say finally, to the mother's side.’”Eileen Myles“A rewarding experience. [Nichols’] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates through the book.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Nichols pulls the readers in . . . with breathtaking immediacy. . . . Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “Nichols handles beautifully the hidden meanings in old family tales heard a hundred times . . . the novel often reads like a piece of music that is wonderfully original.”—Publishers Weekly “A dramatically off-kilter debut novel about wars and the men who fight them . . . We see the Bombardier, an elderly Rotarian and former mayor of a small Midwestern town, rediscovering his youthful memories. His grandson's bewilderment over what to do about the 9/11 attacks highlights the differences between then and now. There's a lot of meaty material here.”—Kirkus “Travis Nichols locates the story in history, the pistol in epistolary. This is crushingly great, altogether original debut that reads like an incantation. I dare you to stop reading.”—Ed Park “This is a beautiful crackpot’s history of America. Travis Nichols takes us on a godly road trip through tobacco, love, and Boom Boom, landing us profoundly still at the world’s loneliest tourist trap. It’s a curious animal version of all those `I was looking for’ books because here the animal (the writing) actually changes when it reaches its destination. And happily Off We Go is also a book about a man loving women: `A toast,’ I say finally, `to the mother's side.’”—Eileen Myles
£10.99
Coffee House Press Extraordinary Renditions
Book SynopsisSet in Budapesta city marked by its rich cultural heritage, the scars of empire, the fresher wounds of industry, and the collateral damage of globalismExtraordinary Renditions is the sweeping story of three equally tarnished expatriates. World-renowned composer and Holocaust survivor Lajos Harkályi has returned to Hungary to debut his final opera and share his mother's parting gift, the melody from a lullaby she sang as he was forced to leave his Hungarian home for the infamous Czech concentration camp Terezín. Private First Class Jonathan "Brutus" Gibson is being blackmailed by his commanding officer at the US Army base in Hungary, one of the infamous black-sites of the global War on Terror, and he must decide between going AWOL or risking his life to make an illegal firearms deal in Budapest. Aspiring musician Melanie Scholes is preparing for the most important performance of her career as a violinist in Harkályi's opera, but before she takes the stage she must extricate herself from a failing relationship and the inertia that threatens to consume her future. As their lives converge on Independence Day, they too will seek liberationfrom the anguish of the Holocaust, the chains of blackmail, and the bonds of conformity. A formidable new voice in American fiction, Ervin tackles the big themes of war, prejudice, and art, lyrically examining the reverberations of unrest in today's central Europe, the United States' legacy abroad, and the resilience of the human spirit.Trade Review“The variety of viewpoints and the author’s evident intimacy with an ancient foreign capital [Budapest] are promising, and Ervin makes it plain that he is taking on weighty themes.”—The New York Times Book Review "Set in a madly grasping modern Budapest, literary critic Ervin's debut mines very different ways of achieving personal and artistic freedom in three neatly polished, interlocking tales. . . . With dexterous sensibility and fluid prose, Ervin's protagonists find liberation from the onerous strictures of Budapest's Nazi and Communist past."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A thought-provoking exploration of tyranny, freedom, and the power of music."—Booklist “Ervin keeps his emotionally and politically fraught setting animated, thanks largely to his skill at inhabiting each of his characters . . . .[Extraordinary Rendition’s] ending makes a poignant case for the power of art in an age of war.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “Darkly evocative . . . the book has a prismlike quality; each story makes us see the city from a different but overlapping perspective."—Philadelphia Inquirer "Andrew Ervin writes with an empathetic passion, near poetic words, daring politics, and a sensitive and mature grasp of his characters. This is a strong debut."—Chris Abani "I can't decide what amazes me most about this book: the confident, muscular beauty of Andrew Ervin's writing; the breadth of his imagination; or the depth and diversity of his profoundly engaging characters. Again and again, though the force of the narrative drove me relentlessly onward, I would stop simply to marvel. Extraordinary Renditions is an extraordinary debut."—Julia Glass "This tautly plotted, richly detailed trio of linked stories documents, with devastating and blackly comic ardor, the impossibility of simple morality in the rapidly aging era of terror. With Philadelphia and Budapest as his unlikely anchors, Andrew Ervin gives us crooked military men, postmodern artists, marauding skinheads and concert musicians, all rendered in nimble prose that never fails to shock and delight. An awesome debut."—J. Robert Lennon "Through the eyes of three outsiders, Extraordinary Renditions takes the reader deep into the heart of Budapest, both its past and present. The whole city is here, the banks of the Danube brimming with history, intrigue, art, food, drink, and most important of all, music. His characters may be lost—even the one native is a foreigner—but Andrew Ervin is a sharp-eyed, sure-handed guide."— Stewart O’Nan "There is a striking moral clarity—a certainty even to the questions the work poses—evidenced as these narratives ponder the long-form's grand themes. Being. Music. War. Love. Extraordinary Renditions' clear tenor hearkens the ancient masters of the novel in the most sublime way, even as it points toward that which is post-mastery."—Bayo OjikutuThe variety of viewpoints and the author’s evident intimacy with an ancient foreign capital [Budapest] are promising, and Ervin makes it plain that he is taking on weighty themes.”—The New York Times Book Review "Set in a madly grasping modern Budapest, literary critic Ervin's debut mines very different ways of achieving personal and artistic freedom in three neatly polished, interlocking tales. . . . With dexterous sensibility and fluid prose, Ervin's protagonists find liberation from the onerous strictures of Budapest's Nazi and Communist past."Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A thought-provoking exploration of tyranny, freedom, and the power of music."Booklist Ervin keeps his emotionally and politically fraught setting animated, thanks largely to his skill at inhabiting each of his characters . . . .[Extraordinary Rendition’s] ending makes a poignant case for the power of art in an age of war.”Minneapolis Star Tribune Darkly evocative . . . the book has a prismlike quality; each story makes us see the city from a different but overlapping perspective."Philadelphia Inquirer "Andrew Ervin writes with an empathetic passion, near poetic words, daring politics, and a sensitive and mature grasp of his characters. This is a strong debut."Chris Abani "I can't decide what amazes me most about this book: the confident, muscular beauty of Andrew Ervin's writing; the breadth of his imagination; or the depth and diversity of his profoundly engaging characters. Again and again, though the force of the narrative drove me relentlessly onward, I would stop simply to marvel. Extraordinary Renditions is an extraordinary debut."Julia Glass "This tautly plotted, richly detailed trio of linked stories documents, with devastating and blackly comic ardor, the impossibility of simple morality in the rapidly aging era of terror. With Philadelphia and Budapest as his unlikely anchors, Andrew Ervin gives us crooked military men, postmodern artists, marauding skinheads and concert musicians, all rendered in nimble prose that never fails to shock and delight. An awesome debut."J. Robert Lennon "Through the eyes of three outsiders, Extraordinary Renditions takes the reader deep into the heart of Budapest, both its past and present. The whole city is here, the banks of the Danube brimming with history, intrigue, art, food, drink, and most important of all, music. His characters may be losteven the one native is a foreignerbut Andrew Ervin is a sharp-eyed, sure-handed guide." Stewart O’Nan "There is a striking moral claritya certainty even to the questions the work posesevidenced as these narratives ponder the long-form's grand themes. Being. Music. War. Love. Extraordinary Renditions' clear tenor hearkens the ancient masters of the novel in the most sublime way, even as it points toward that which is post-mastery."Bayo Ojikutu
£10.99
Coffee House Press Netsuke
Book SynopsisA writer of great prestige, Ducornet was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, winner of the 2008 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and twice honored by the Lannan Foundation. Coffee House Press is thrilled to have her name on our list. Ducornet is widely published in the US and abroad (including fiction, poetry, and children’s) and regularly anthologized in major fiction anthologies. Extensive interview available at Del Sol Literary Dialogues Ducornet was the inspiration for Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” due to a friendship with songwriter Donald Fagen while he was at Bard College. Ducornet gave him her phone number at a college party.Trade ReviewSex and psychosis are indistinguishable in this killer new novel from Ducornet. . . . [A]s fascinating as it is dirty and dark, . . . the plot is impossible to resist.”Publishers Weekly, starred review Ducornet is a novelist of ambition and scope. One is grateful for what she’s accomplished here.”The New York Times Pick up a book by the award-winning Ducornet, and you know it will be startling, elegant, and perfectly formedlike netsuke, those miniature Japanese sculptures used to fasten the cord of a kimono. This latest, an unflinching meditation on the twinned drives of lust and destruction, is no exception. . . . Writing about a satyr-psychiatrist could be so predictable, but Ducornet makes her characters real and scary beneath the ruminative, quietly observant prose. Highly recommended for literate readers.”Library Journal "Ducornet's new book tenaciously plums the tension between impulse and restraint." American Book Review An enticing, fast-moving exploration of one man’s obsession with his calculated power and unhinged desires.”Booklist Ms. Ducornet writes with velocity, immediacy, and impact. It only takes a few pages to be caught up in the mind of the doctor. . . . This story has some fascinating insights and noholds-barred language.”New York Journal of Books 'When the very air of one's marriage grows thin and dim, there is nothing to do but set out to find a richer, brighter air,' ponders the narrator of Port Townsend author Rikki Ducornet's brief, fervent novel Netsuke. . . . Written in lyrical, sensuous prose, as if shrouded in a fog of humidity, Netsuke emerges as a character study of a man in crisis.”The Seattle Times "The almost eerie tale of a dicey, bisexual psychoanalyst gone mad.”Washington City Paper [A] finely crafted object of a novel . . . . Ducornet weaves a complex tapestry of various and repeated colors, textures, and designs. . . . The total effect is simply remarkable, an austere yet somehow lush beauty. At times this chilling tale seems neo-gothic, reminiscent of the work of Patrick McGrath, though much more compact. Ducornet has the extraordinary ability to compress an explosive tale of violence and repression in a small, tight container. . . . [W]e are simultaneously repulsed and entranced as the disturbing but gorgeous story accelerates to its foregone conclusion.”Rain Taxi Carefully limning the interstices between obsession, rage, desire, truth, and intimacy, as well as attentively traversing the places of same, Netsuke castigates a life, and perhaps our society as a whole, in which Eros has gone awry.”American Book Review Netsuke is a testament to Ducornet’s ever evolving, ever relevant, and simply compelling ability to tell a story. It’s well-suited for this era so defined by its shades of gray. . . . [I]t is perfect for this moment in American culture.”KGB Bar Lit Journal Dark, yet enlightening. Rikki Ducornet’s writing is beautifully disturbed, off-putting and brilliant. . . . Rikki Ducornet uses the loathsome character as a vehicle to explore interesting points about the intersection between humanity and animal instinct.”Twin Cities Daily Planet [Netsuke] mesmerizes in its fascination with the psychoanalyst’s destruction of anything worthwhile around him, and the reader becomes a voyeur unable to look away. . . . The writing is superb, whether detailing disturbing moments fraught with drama or revealing the doctor’s thoughts. . . . Netsuke has teeth and claws. It isn’t a comfortable book for a reader to inhabit, and yet it has important things to say, embedded in the deadly beautiful prose. . . . Readers owe it to themselves to encounter this slim but complex novel on its own terms.”Jeff Vandermeer Rikki Ducornet's Netsuke is a slim but powerful novel. This dark psycho-sexual tale of a psychoanalyst's downward spiral is crisply written, engrossing, and impossible to forget, and has me searching out other works by Ducornet.”Large-Hearted Boy "Ducornet is a very good writer, and she crafts a marvelous and disturbing story. . . . If you can stomach the bleak view of intimacy (A moment’s bliss and then: the mule brays”), this novel is amazing. For fans of Chuck Palahniuk.”Hey Small Press "Netsuke comes at the summit of Rikki Ducornet's passionate, caring, and accomplished career. Its readers will pick up pages of painful beauty and calamitous memory, and their focus will be like a burning glass; its examination of a ruinous sexual life is as delicate and sharp as a surgeon's knife. And the rendering? The rendering is as good as it gets."William Gass [Ducornet] writes novels in delicate, precise language. . . . [Netsuke] is an introspective study of the life of a bad manor is he a man who just keeps making bad decisions?who can't stop abusing his power.”The Stranger Judging by her new novel, [Ducornet] has not lost ground. . . . Netsuke, a short novel that seethes with dark energy and sinister eroticism, still has power to shock, maybe even to appall. . . . Our society is numb to explicit depictions of sexual acts. The perversity, decadence, even the depravity that Ducornet renders here feel explosively fresh because their sources are thought and emotion, not the body, and finally there’s pathos too.”The Boston Globe "Netsuke is a little masterpiece, a gem of a psychological novel. Because the doctor's mental condition is unstable, his actions are unpredictable, lending an uncertainty to the plot which keeps the story taut and exciting. And the ending is unpredictable, though in context makes perfect sense. Very highly recommended."Lisa Guidarini, NBCC [Netsuke], just released on Coffee House Press, is a classic example of Ducornet’s desire to explore darkness. . . . To this writer, the psyche is a most magnetic frontier.”Peninsula Woman Rikki Ducornet can create an unsettling, dreamlike beauty out of any subject. In the heady mix of her fiction, everything becomes potently suggestive, resonant, fascinating. She exposes life’s harshest truths with a mesmeric delicacy and holds her readers spellbound.”Joanna Scott There is the time before you open Rikki Ducornet’s Netsuke and then there is only the time in which you are readinga searing present of heart-swallowing secrets, warped eroticism, betrayals, and insight trellised against the page in nightshade-gorgeous prose.”Forrest Gander "Rikki Ducornet travels . . . literary terrain with an assured, lyrical voice that consistently fascinates." Los Angeles Review“Sex and psychosis are indistinguishable in this killer new novel from Ducornet. . . . [A]s fascinating as it is dirty and dark, . . . the plot is impossible to resist.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “Ducornet is a novelist of ambition and scope. One is grateful for what she’s accomplished here.”—The New York Times “Pick up a book by the award-winning Ducornet, and you know it will be startling, elegant, and perfectly formed—like netsuke, those miniature Japanese sculptures used to fasten the cord of a kimono. This latest, an unflinching meditation on the twinned drives of lust and destruction, is no exception. . . . Writing about a satyr-psychiatrist could be so predictable, but Ducornet makes her characters real and scary beneath the ruminative, quietly observant prose. Highly recommended for literate readers.”—Library Journal "Ducornet's new book tenaciously plums the tension between impulse and restraint." —American Book Review “An enticing, fast-moving exploration of one man’s obsession with his calculated power and unhinged desires.”—Booklist “Ms. Ducornet writes with velocity, immediacy, and impact. It only takes a few pages to be caught up in the mind of the doctor. . . . This story has some fascinating insights and noholds-barred language.”—New York Journal of Books “'When the very air of one's marriage grows thin and dim, there is nothing to do but set out to find a richer, brighter air,' ponders the narrator of Port Townsend author Rikki Ducornet's brief, fervent novel Netsuke. . . . Written in lyrical, sensuous prose, as if shrouded in a fog of humidity, Netsuke emerges as a character study of a man in crisis.”—The Seattle Times "The almost eerie tale of a dicey, bisexual psychoanalyst gone mad.”—Washington City Paper “[A] finely crafted object of a novel . . . . Ducornet weaves a complex tapestry of various and repeated colors, textures, and designs. . . . The total effect is simply remarkable, an austere yet somehow lush beauty. At times this chilling tale seems neo-gothic, reminiscent of the work of Patrick McGrath, though much more compact. Ducornet has the extraordinary ability to compress an explosive tale of violence and repression in a small, tight container. . . . [W]e are simultaneously repulsed and entranced as the disturbing but gorgeous story accelerates to its foregone conclusion.”—Rain Taxi “Carefully limning the interstices between obsession, rage, desire, truth, and intimacy, as well as attentively traversing the places of same, Netsuke castigates a life, and perhaps our society as a whole, in which Eros has gone awry.”—American Book Review “Netsuke is a testament to Ducornet’s ever evolving, ever relevant, and simply compelling ability to tell a story. It’s well-suited for this era so defined by its shades of gray. . . . [I]t is perfect for this moment in American culture.”—KGB Bar Lit Journal “Dark, yet enlightening. Rikki Ducornet’s writing is beautifully disturbed, off-putting and brilliant. . . . Rikki Ducornet uses the loathsome character as a vehicle to explore interesting points about the intersection between humanity and animal instinct.”—Twin Cities Daily Planet “[Netsuke] mesmerizes in its fascination with the psychoanalyst’s destruction of anything worthwhile around him, and the reader becomes a voyeur unable to look away. . . . The writing is superb, whether detailing disturbing moments fraught with drama or revealing the doctor’s thoughts. . . . Netsuke has teeth and claws. It isn’t a comfortable book for a reader to inhabit, and yet it has important things to say, embedded in the deadly beautiful prose. . . . Readers owe it to themselves to encounter this slim but complex novel on its own terms.”—Jeff Vandermeer “Rikki Ducornet's Netsuke is a slim but powerful novel. This dark psycho-sexual tale of a psychoanalyst's downward spiral is crisply written, engrossing, and impossible to forget, and has me searching out other works by Ducornet.”—Large-Hearted Boy "Ducornet is a very good writer, and she crafts a marvelous and disturbing story. . . . If you can stomach the bleak view of intimacy (“A moment’s bliss and then: the mule brays”), this novel is amazing. For fans of Chuck Palahniuk.”—Hey Small Press "Netsuke comes at the summit of Rikki Ducornet's passionate, caring, and accomplished career. Its readers will pick up pages of painful beauty and calamitous memory, and their focus will be like a burning glass; its examination of a ruinous sexual life is as delicate and sharp as a surgeon's knife. And the rendering? The rendering is as good as it gets."—William Gass “[Ducornet] writes novels in delicate, precise language. . . . [Netsuke] is an introspective study of the life of a bad man—or is he a man who just keeps making bad decisions?—who can't stop abusing his power.”—The Stranger “Judging by her new novel, [Ducornet] has not lost ground. . . . Netsuke, a short novel that seethes with dark energy and sinister eroticism, still has power to shock, maybe even to appall. . . . Our society is numb to explicit depictions of sexual acts. The perversity, decadence, even the depravity that Ducornet renders here feel explosively fresh because their sources are thought and emotion, not the body, and finally there’s pathos too.”—The Boston Globe "Netsuke is a little masterpiece, a gem of a psychological novel. Because the doctor's mental condition is unstable, his actions are unpredictable, lending an uncertainty to the plot which keeps the story taut and exciting. And the ending is unpredictable, though in context makes perfect sense. Very highly recommended."—Lisa Guidarini, NBCC “[Netsuke], just released on Coffee House Press, is a classic example of Ducornet’s desire to explore darkness. . . . To this writer, the psyche is a most magnetic frontier.”—Peninsula Woman “Rikki Ducornet can create an unsettling, dreamlike beauty out of any subject. In the heady mix of her fiction, everything becomes potently suggestive, resonant, fascinating. She exposes life’s harshest truths with a mesmeric delicacy and holds her readers spellbound.”—Joanna Scott “There is the time before you open Rikki Ducornet’s Netsuke and then there is only the time in which you are reading—a searing present of heart-swallowing secrets, warped eroticism, betrayals, and insight trellised against the page in nightshade-gorgeous prose.”—Forrest Gander "Rikki Ducornet travels . . . literary terrain with an assured, lyrical voice that consistently fascinates." —Los Angeles Review
£12.34
Coffee House Press Glass
Book SynopsisAsked by a publisher to write a preface to her late husband’s novel, Edna defiantly sets out to write a separate book not just about Clarence but also about my life, as one could not pretend to understand Clarence without that.” Simultaneously her neighbor asks her to care for an apartment full of plants and animals. The demands of the living things a rat, fish, ferns compete for Edna's attention with long-repressed memories. Day by day pages of seemingly random thoughts fall from her typewriter. Gradually taking shape within the mosaic of memory is the story of a remarkable marriage and of a mind pushed to its limits. Is Edna’s memoir a homage to her late husband or an act of belated revenge? Was she the cultured and hypersensitive victim of a crass and brutally ambitious husband, or was he the caretaker of a neurotic and delusional wife? The reader must decide. The unforgettable characters in Savage's two hit novels Firmin and The Cry of the Sloth garnered critical acclaim, selling a million copies worldwide. In Edna, once again Sam Savage has created a character marked by contradiction--simultaneously appealing and exasperating, comical and tragic.Trade ReviewJanuary Magazine, Best of 2011 "[A]n intriguing story . . . Savage's skill is in creating complex first-person characters using nothing but their own voice. . . . Edna's voice, too, is unique and hypnotic, although it is full of evasions and omissions. She tells a difficult story: It is cold and critical, a fading picture in place of memory. Typically, memoir gives us the emotional high points, but Savage's Edna inverts that: She writes loneliness and tedium, the bits and pieces that are hard to look at, or that typically wind up on the cutting room floor."—Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times "[A] dazzling, graceful novel . . . Glass gives us both a life story told well and tantalizingly in unspooled snippets, and a thoughtful rumination on the nature of late-life reflection itself. . . . Note is usually made of Savage's age upon the publication of his first novel in 2006: He was 65. But the layers of wisdom, the rapier honesty and the sheer intellectual rigor he displays in novels like Glass argue that seasoning may well trump youthful audacity in writing, perhaps the most cerebral of the arts."—Minneapolis Star Tribune "Readers who don’t know that author Sam Savage (Firmin, The Cry of the Sloth) holds a PhD in philosophy from Yale until after they’ve read Glass will be unsurprised. The book, while a skilled piece of storytelling, reads like a philosophical exploration as much as anything else. . . . Glass is a fantastic experiment in perspective and an oddly memorable book."—January Magazine, Best of 2011 “Sam Savage creat[es] some of the most original, unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction. . . . Now there’s Edna, the elderly widow in Glass whose ongoing, typewritten argument with her late husband, Clarence, a novelist, covers in painstaking detail the mundane particulars of a life while ultimately uncovering the transcendent power of art. . . . Readers are left with a voice so strong that Savage is able to derive significance from these events by sheer literary force.”—Poets & Writers "Introspection is at the heart of this new novel from Savage, which effectively defines that jewel of a word, velleity (the lowest level of compulsion to act, a slight impulse to do something). . . . Reading like an intersection between Samuel R. Delany’s The Motion of Light in Water and Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall in its take on the overriding truth of memory and the heroic task of solitude, this is an original and compelling book. Highly recommended."—Library Journal, starred review “Savage is not interested in the linear unfolding of the events in Edna’s life but rather in the meanings that have accreted to them as she introspectively mulls them over and tries to make sense of things. . . . An engaging study of both the quirks and the depths of personality.”—Kirkus Reviews "Readers of Savage’s Firmin (2006) and Cry of the Sloth (2009) will come to this one with large expectations, and they won’t be disappointed. . . . Savage’s decision to use the point of view of an unreliable narrator will capture the attention of readers of literary fiction. The wry, bizarre humor will keep it.”—Booklist "There is a ruddy and ribald wisdom at work [in Glass]. . . . If you’ve let Sam Savage take you on previous journeys, if you’ve enjoyed those journeys, I wholeheartedly recommend you let him take you on his latest flight of fancy.”—Bookmunch "Edna is hilarious, poetic, and heartbreaking, all without really trying to be. . . . [T]he glimpses of her past life are so perfectly sculpted and are teeming with gorgeous language, and her humor that cuts them short is so precise and well-played.”—Hazel & Wren “Sam Savage’s exhilarating, often lilting use of language and his faultless characterization of the eccentric, unraveling of his main character, Edna, is evocative, poetic, and compelling.”—New York Journal of Books “On a craft level, Glass leaves several strong impressions, at least some of which other fiction writers and students of fiction writing may find instructive. . . . Savage’s skill in sustaining the reader’s attention through 200 pages of apparent stream-of-consciousness may be exemplary. . . . In a novel that essentially lacks a plot, he nonetheless creates one of the most intriguing stories—and one of the most vivid characters—that this reader has encountered this year.”—The Writer “Glass transforms through Edna’s pathology (and Savage’s relentless vision) into a deeply felt exploration of memory, of what it means to outlive the sources of one’s suffering. . . . Here is where the novel shines: through a Beckettian obsession with precision of language, the tension between solipsism and longing becomes primal, and through Edna, Savage creates a world so small that his reader is forced to confront the very stitching that binds together its existence, frail as that is. . . . [Glass] is profound, and readers are ultimately rewarded with a nearly voyeuristic pleasure, watching as this human life unfolds, reluctantly, in all its tragic splendor.”—BookPage "The sharply drawn characters in Savage’s two previous works, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, which novel’s namesake is a rat, and The Cry of the Sloth received critical acclaim. He’s done it again with the at once appealing and irritating Edna, whose tragedy bites with cartoon fangs.”—Denver Examiner “Savage devotes much of Edna’s typing . . . to careful examinations of phrases, astute observations and literary references. . . . [Glass is] Sam Savage’s examination of the truth of memory, the effects of self-imposed solitude, and the churning verbal mechanics of writer's mind.”—Shelf Awareness “One of the many accomplishments in this fine novel . . . is to make a reader come close to understanding the deadening sadness of [Edna’s] life, and potential fate, and, finally, feel sympathy for a character whose ways can be off-putting and obscure.”—Requited JournalJanuary Magazine, Best of 2011 "[A]n intriguing story . . . Savage's skill is in creating complex first-person characters using nothing but their own voice. . . . Edna's voice, too, is unique and hypnotic, although it is full of evasions and omissions. She tells a difficult story: It is cold and critical, a fading picture in place of memory. Typically, memoir gives us the emotional high points, but Savage's Edna inverts that: She writes loneliness and tedium, the bits and pieces that are hard to look at, or that typically wind up on the cutting room floor."Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times "[A] dazzling, graceful novel . . . Glass gives us both a life story told well and tantalizingly in unspooled snippets, and a thoughtful rumination on the nature of late-life reflection itself. . . . Note is usually made of Savage's age upon the publication of his first novel in 2006: He was 65. But the layers of wisdom, the rapier honesty and the sheer intellectual rigor he displays in novels like Glass argue that seasoning may well trump youthful audacity in writing, perhaps the most cerebral of the arts."Minneapolis Star Tribune "Readers who don’t know that author Sam Savage (Firmin, The Cry of the Sloth) holds a PhD in philosophy from Yale until after they’ve read Glass will be unsurprised. The book, while a skilled piece of storytelling, reads like a philosophical exploration as much as anything else. . . . Glass is a fantastic experiment in perspective and an oddly memorable book."January Magazine, Best of 2011 Sam Savage creat[es] some of the most original, unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction. . . . Now there’s Edna, the elderly widow in Glass whose ongoing, typewritten argument with her late husband, Clarence, a novelist, covers in painstaking detail the mundane particulars of a life while ultimately uncovering the transcendent power of art. . . . Readers are left with a voice so strong that Savage is able to derive significance from these events by sheer literary force.”Poets & Writers "Introspection is at the heart of this new novel from Savage, which effectively defines that jewel of a word, velleity (the lowest level of compulsion to act, a slight impulse to do something). . . . Reading like an intersection between Samuel R. Delany’s The Motion of Light in Water and Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall in its take on the overriding truth of memory and the heroic task of solitude, this is an original and compelling book. Highly recommended."Library Journal, starred review Savage is not interested in the linear unfolding of the events in Edna’s life but rather in the meanings that have accreted to them as she introspectively mulls them over and tries to make sense of things. . . . An engaging study of both the quirks and the depths of personality.”Kirkus Reviews "Readers of Savage’s Firmin (2006) and Cry of the Sloth (2009) will come to this one with large expectations, and they won’t be disappointed. . . . Savage’s decision to use the point of view of an unreliable narrator will capture the attention of readers of literary fiction. The wry, bizarre humor will keep it.”Booklist "There is a ruddy and ribald wisdom at work [in Glass]. . . . If you’ve let Sam Savage take you on previous journeys, if you’ve enjoyed those journeys, I wholeheartedly recommend you let him take you on his latest flight of fancy.”Bookmunch "Edna is hilarious, poetic, and heartbreaking, all without really trying to be. . . . [T]he glimpses of her past life are so perfectly sculpted and are teeming with gorgeous language, and her humor that cuts them short is so precise and well-played.”Hazel & Wren Sam Savage’s exhilarating, often lilting use of language and his faultless characterization of the eccentric, unraveling of his main character, Edna, is evocative, poetic, and compelling.”New York Journal of Books On a craft level, Glass leaves several strong impressions, at least some of which other fiction writers and students of fiction writing may find instructive. . . . Savage’s skill in sustaining the reader’s attention through 200 pages of apparent stream-of-consciousness may be exemplary. . . . In a novel that essentially lacks a plot, he nonetheless creates one of the most intriguing storiesand one of the most vivid charactersthat this reader has encountered this year.”The Writer Glass transforms through Edna’s pathology (and Savage’s relentless vision) into a deeply felt exploration of memory, of what it means to outlive the sources of one’s suffering. . . . Here is where the novel shines: through a Beckettian obsession with precision of language, the tension between solipsism and longing becomes primal, and through Edna, Savage creates a world so small that his reader is forced to confront the very stitching that binds together its existence, frail as that is. . . . [Glass] is profound, and readers are ultimately rewarded with a nearly voyeuristic pleasure, watching as this human life unfolds, reluctantly, in all its tragic splendor.”BookPage "The sharply drawn characters in Savage’s two previous works, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, which novel’s namesake is a rat, and The Cry of the Sloth received critical acclaim. He’s done it again with the at once appealing and irritating Edna, whose tragedy bites with cartoon fangs.”Denver Examiner Savage devotes much of Edna’s typing . . . to careful examinations of phrases, astute observations and literary references. . . . [Glass is] Sam Savage’s examination of the truth of memory, the effects of self-imposed solitude, and the churning verbal mechanics of writer's mind.”Shelf Awareness One of the many accomplishments in this fine novel . . . is to make a reader come close to understanding the deadening sadness of [Edna’s] life, and potential fate, and, finally, feel sympathy for a character whose ways can be off-putting and obscure.”Requited Journal
£10.99
Coffee House Press Sleight
Book SynopsisSisters Lark and Clef have spent their lives honing their bodies for sleight, an interdisciplinary art form that combines elements of dance, architecture, acrobatics, and spoken word. After being estranged for several years, the sisters are reunited by a deceptive and ambitious sleight troupe director named West who needs the sisters' opposing approaches to the formLark is tormented and fragile, but a prodigy; Clef is driven to excel, but lacks the spark of artistic genius. When a disturbing mass murder makes national headlines, West seizes on the event as inspiration for his new performance, one that threatens to destroy the very artists performing it. In language that is at once unsettling and hypnotic, Sleight explores ideas of performance, gender, and family to ask the question: what is the role of art in the face of unthinkable tragedy? Kirsten Kaschock has earned degrees from Yale University, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and the University of Georgia. The author of two collections of poetry, Unfathoms and A Beautiful Name for a Girl, she resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she is currently a doctoral fellow in dance at Temple University.Trade Review“An unusual, dreamlike tale. . . . Gothic and intense, this fully imagined yet partly private work of storytelling [is]. . . . powerfully original.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kaschock . . . weaves a tight story. Her inventive, fragmented style scrambles subjects and objects to squeeze the inner world of artistic process onto the page. . . . Sleight is a disgorged dream, painstakingly crystallized; when it ends, you'll want tickets to the show.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Kaschock’s work stands out for the originality of its concepts, narrative structure, and, particularly, language, as the author redefines words in relation to her art and boldly breaks from traditional grammatical constructions. Kaschock’s intimate knowledge of dance is an asset, helping her bring the sleight performers vividly to life. . . . Sleight is to the traditional fiction narrative what alternative music is to mainstream pop. Readers who enjoy the challenge of an innovative, unconventional style will take pleasure in this selection.”—Library Journal “Kaschock is a sensitive writer, with an uncanny empathy for her characters—particularly when dealing with the limits of the body. . . . [A] moving portrait of mental illness, of sibling love and rivalry, and above all, of the destructive power of great art over its performers.”—Barnes & Noble Review “Sleight features startlingly innovative storytelling, and is as fascinating as it is disturbing.”—David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy “A provocative debut . . . By transforming the unseen into the real, concepts become an unsettling reality. Always disorienting yet fascinating to watch unfold, Sleight provides a deep examination of art and those who engage with its ever-shifting presence.”—New Pages “Absorbing. . . . Kaschock’s stylized prose requires the reader to focus, to be drawn into her tale of the ways art can and cannot affect audiences and artists while seeking to reflect and redefine the world. . . . The book is not be taken lightly, but is worthy of being taken up.”—Cedar Rapids Gazette "There isn’t anyone like any single one of us, but the way there is no one like Kirsten Kaschock is a different thing."—Cheryl Strayed, The Rumpus “It’s increasingly rare for any book to really surprise you. Sleight does more: it astonishes. A rigorous, unsentimental, strange and beautiful work.”—China Miéville “Sleight is either disturbingly enjoyable or enjoyably disturbing--I can't decide which. What's certain is that Kirsten Kaschock is a wildly talented writer. You should read this book.”—Adam Levin “With grace and whip-smart wit, Kirsten Kaschock is a gift from the gods of young talent.”—Mary Karr "I love this book. It is an acutely literary sci-fi rhapsody about inter-dimensional dance, and the tortured relationships between the dancers. It is also a subtle critique of our age. Kaschock accurately replicates our societal anxieties, our inexpressible longings, our blind spots, our terrors, both holy and profane, and even, thank God, our joys. The novel’s language hums like a Buddhist gong, and the characters are at the same time sublimely mythic and frighteningly real, almost palpable. There is genuine magic in her novel."—Reginald McKnight “[T]he novel is by turns intriguing, mysterious, and lovely, much like the art of sleight.”—Puerto Del SolAn unusual, dreamlike tale. . . . Gothic and intense, this fully imagined yet partly private work of storytelling [is]. . . . powerfully original.”Kirkus Reviews Kaschock . . . weaves a tight story. Her inventive, fragmented style scrambles subjects and objects to squeeze the inner world of artistic process onto the page. . . . Sleight is a disgorged dream, painstakingly crystallized; when it ends, you'll want tickets to the show.”The Philadelphia Inquirer Kaschock’s work stands out for the originality of its concepts, narrative structure, and, particularly, language, as the author redefines words in relation to her art and boldly breaks from traditional grammatical constructions. Kaschock’s intimate knowledge of dance is an asset, helping her bring the sleight performers vividly to life. . . . Sleight is to the traditional fiction narrative what alternative music is to mainstream pop. Readers who enjoy the challenge of an innovative, unconventional style will take pleasure in this selection.”Library Journal Kaschock is a sensitive writer, with an uncanny empathy for her charactersparticularly when dealing with the limits of the body. . . . [A] moving portrait of mental illness, of sibling love and rivalry, and above all, of the destructive power of great art over its performers.”Barnes & Noble Review Sleight features startlingly innovative storytelling, and is as fascinating as it is disturbing.”David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy A provocative debut . . . By transforming the unseen into the real, concepts become an unsettling reality. Always disorienting yet fascinating to watch unfold, Sleight provides a deep examination of art and those who engage with its ever-shifting presence.”New Pages Absorbing. . . . Kaschock’s stylized prose requires the reader to focus, to be drawn into her tale of the ways art can and cannot affect audiences and artists while seeking to reflect and redefine the world. . . . The book is not be taken lightly, but is worthy of being taken up.”Cedar Rapids Gazette "There isn’t anyone like any single one of us, but the way there is no one like Kirsten Kaschock is a different thing."Cheryl Strayed, The Rumpus It’s increasingly rare for any book to really surprise you. Sleight does more: it astonishes. A rigorous, unsentimental, strange and beautiful work.”China Miéville Sleight is either disturbingly enjoyable or enjoyably disturbing--I can't decide which. What's certain is that Kirsten Kaschock is a wildly talented writer. You should read this book.”Adam Levin With grace and whip-smart wit, Kirsten Kaschock is a gift from the gods of young talent.”Mary Karr "I love this book. It is an acutely literary sci-fi rhapsody about inter-dimensional dance, and the tortured relationships between the dancers. It is also a subtle critique of our age. Kaschock accurately replicates our societal anxieties, our inexpressible longings, our blind spots, our terrors, both holy and profane, and even, thank God, our joys. The novel’s language hums like a Buddhist gong, and the characters are at the same time sublimely mythic and frighteningly real, almost palpable. There is genuine magic in her novel."Reginald McKnight [T]he novel is by turns intriguing, mysterious, and lovely, much like the art of sleight.”Puerto Del Sol
£11.99
Coffee House Press The Impossibly
Book SynopsisNew material in the paperback edition includes an introduction by Percival Everett, an afterword by Laird Hunt, and a "lost chapter." Hunt's experimentation with the novel has made him a major influence for a young generation of novelists. The narrator's wry, self-deprecating humor make this nameless protagonist endearing. Featured in The Believer four years after its publication and named one of the "Underappreciated in 2002 by the same publication, The Impossibly is considered one of those literary gems lost in the turmoil following the 9/11 attacks. Available as an audio book via Iambik.Trade ReviewFinalist, Firecracker Alternative Book Award "[Laird Hunt] captures the tone of Paul Auster’s City of Glass in the first few chapters, and he brings a decidedly Kafkaesque feel to the spy’s early adventures.”—Publishers Weekly “Hunt debuts with a stylish, if opaque, noir tale about a hit man who falls in love, takes a break, and incurs the wrath of his organization. . . . The mystery runs at all levels here, and the style and situation have appeal.” —Kirkus Reviews “Hunt is an intellect and a great spinner of claustrophobic noir plots, and his erudite gumshoe yarn owes as much to Georges Perec and Gertrude Stein as it does to Paul Auster.”—The Believer “For 200 pages, Hunt sustains an atmosphere of severe disorientation, packing his story with more curious and vaguely menacing strangers than a David Lynch movie. . . . The book’s many layers and difficult questions make it an ideal candidate for an adventurous book club.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “The Impossibly is one of the most exciting debut novels I have ever read. . . . While most Kafka comparisons are specious and overstated, Hunt’s subtle humor, sophisticated intelligence and the graceful timbre of his prose place this novel firmly in the tradition of The Castle, as well as Nabokov’s The Eye and Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser. This is high praise indeed, but The Impossibly is a marvelous, wonderful novel.”—Review of Contemporary Fiction “The Impossibly, Laird Hunt’s first novel, is a challenging and inventive work, alternately chilling and humorous, that breaks new ground in the world of speculative fiction. Diffuse with noir tropes stripped of their origins, it leaves the reader with a map of the complicit mind trying to deal with perversity and adversity in a violent world.”—Rain Taxi Review of Books “From the title to the last, dreamlike passage, Hunt’s novel is a deliberate, sometimes striking conundrum, one with its origins deep in the heart of traditional genres (in particular, hardboiled detective fiction and international spy thrillers), but with ambitions that extend into knotty problems of narrative, language, and meaning."—American Book Review “Every once in a long while, you discover a novel unlike anything else you’ve ever read. Laird Hunt’s debut is one of them. Innovative, comic, bizarre and beautiful, The Impossibly reads as if Donald Barthelme were channeling Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, Ben Marcus and reruns of Get Smart.”—Time Out New York “A fractured espionage story, John le Carré à la Borges.”—The StrangerFinalist, Firecracker Alternative Book Award "[Laird Hunt] captures the tone of Paul Auster’s City of Glass in the first few chapters, and he brings a decidedly Kafkaesque feel to the spy’s early adventures.”Publishers Weekly Hunt debuts with a stylish, if opaque, noir tale about a hit man who falls in love, takes a break, and incurs the wrath of his organization. . . . The mystery runs at all levels here, and the style and situation have appeal.” Kirkus Reviews Hunt is an intellect and a great spinner of claustrophobic noir plots, and his erudite gumshoe yarn owes as much to Georges Perec and Gertrude Stein as it does to Paul Auster.”The Believer For 200 pages, Hunt sustains an atmosphere of severe disorientation, packing his story with more curious and vaguely menacing strangers than a David Lynch movie. . . . The book’s many layers and difficult questions make it an ideal candidate for an adventurous book club.”Minneapolis Star Tribune The Impossibly is one of the most exciting debut novels I have ever read. . . . While most Kafka comparisons are specious and overstated, Hunt’s subtle humor, sophisticated intelligence and the graceful timbre of his prose place this novel firmly in the tradition of The Castle, as well as Nabokov’s The Eye and Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser. This is high praise indeed, but The Impossibly is a marvelous, wonderful novel.”Review of Contemporary Fiction The Impossibly, Laird Hunt’s first novel, is a challenging and inventive work, alternately chilling and humorous, that breaks new ground in the world of speculative fiction. Diffuse with noir tropes stripped of their origins, it leaves the reader with a map of the complicit mind trying to deal with perversity and adversity in a violent world.”Rain Taxi Review of Books From the title to the last, dreamlike passage, Hunt’s novel is a deliberate, sometimes striking conundrum, one with its origins deep in the heart of traditional genres (in particular, hardboiled detective fiction and international spy thrillers), but with ambitions that extend into knotty problems of narrative, language, and meaning."American Book Review Every once in a long while, you discover a novel unlike anything else you’ve ever read. Laird Hunt’s debut is one of them. Innovative, comic, bizarre and beautiful, The Impossibly reads as if Donald Barthelme were channeling Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, Ben Marcus and reruns of Get Smart.”Time Out New York A fractured espionage story, John le Carré à la Borges.”The StrangerTable of ContentsIntroduction by Percival Everett Afterword by Laird Hunt
£10.99
Coffee House Press Boarded Windows
Book SynopsisStuffed with music and cultural references from the late 60s, 70s, and 80s, this book will appeal to fans of vinyl and popular music of that era. A songwriter and musician, Hicks has released several albums, contributed to compilations, and is well known on the music scene. Hicks will simultaneously release a soundtrack to his book (lyrics from the book have been set to music), which we’ll also use to help promote the book. He plans to read and perform at his events. An arts and entertainment critic, Hicks has written for the Village Voice, New York Times, Star Tribune, City Pages, and Rain Taxi Review of Books. Set in Uptown Minneapolis during the 90sand North Dakota in the 70s, this novel captures the Midwest during a transformative time. Midwesterners will recognize the big Halloween storm of ’91. Themes of adoption as well as split and untraditional families run throughout the novel.Trade Review"[N]uanced with fluid prose and a pensive, melancholy undercurrent..."Publishers Weekly "This novel calls into question the notion of truth and asks to whom one's story really belongs . . . it is rife with humans desperate for connection, for finding their place in this enigmatic world."ForeWord "Boarded Windows is a contemporary orphan story singing the music and mood of America's counterculture."Twin Cities Metro Magazine "Boarded Windows is a shrewd and soulful novel. References (high and low, familiar and obscure) abound in this eloquent and unusual story of not-quite innocence lost. Hicks uses his intimate knowledge of American music to give us a precise portrait of Wade Salem, a self-taught, fast-talking half-genius." Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia and Eat the Document Do yourself a favor and read this smart, tender book. The characters will haunt you with their longing, and inspire you with their sweet, caustic wit. Dylan Hicks knows his music and his prose is a song in itself. He's given light to the shuttered and boarded parts of life.” Sam Lipsyte As a novel, Dylan Hicks’s Boarded Windows takes a sly, questioning, sidelong glance that keeps both the narrator and his listenersbecause this novel is whispered, confided, mused, as much as it is writtencontinually off balance. As a work of American iconography, it’s a continually hilarious, hopes-dashed account of an indelible American character: the con man.” Greil Marcus Boarded Windows is a luminous novel about love and loss. Written with wit, profundity, and compassion, Dylan Hicks’s debut delights in language and music and the joys of being alive. This is a deeply moving book that announces a major talent in American fiction.” Samantha Gillison "[Boarded Windows is] a rock'n'roll story couched in Proustian delicacy, a Beat reconfiguring of the family that moves towards pomo deconstruction of any reliable relationshipand withal, a hybrid of highly pleasing shape." Bookforum "[H]ick's narrator . . . has a charm and appeal all his own. With each scene and sentence, he is forever trying to capture the truth of the moment. [T]his constant searching and second guessing . . . makes the narrator all at once alluring, lonely, and naïve, which is perhaps what makes this novel such an apt portrait of the early 1990s." City Pages "Dylan Hicks, author, freelance writer, and musician, has crafted a novel rich with multi-faceted characters and layer upon layer of the characters' personal histories." Hazel and Wren "Hicks is a terrific writer who can craft a simile with the best of them."Kirkus "It's own thing to find your own voice, it's another to create your own language, and I think that's what Dylan does." Greil Marcus "[T]his book is not merely a postmodern exercise in notions of truth, nor is it merely funny and intelligent; it is fundamentally a sincere and heartbreaking tale of loneliness, a man who comes to realize that the windows in his life, home, and family are inherently boarded up." Brooklyn Rail Pop-music references pepper the pages of Hicks’ ambitious debut about the prickly relationship between a father and son. . . . with polished prose that is witty and smart.” Booklist Evident in Hicks’ writing is a sense of inevitability that would’ve garnered a thumbs-up from Flannery O’Connor. The sirens of unavoidable heartbreak sound throughout this book, not quite drowned out by all the music and erudite chatter, and you can’t help but want to stick around to watch the storm roll in.” MPR's 89.3 The Current Local Blog "The novel is a carnival ride of amusing, sad narrativespeople telling people the stories of their lives. The problem lies in deciding which of these many stories to believe, determining how and where the source material has been polluted, corrupted, and distorted through time." MNartists.org "The joy in Hicks' debut arises less from plot than from the writing itself: nuanced, ingenious, perceptive, funny. Music plays a role, but doesn't dominate. A heartfelt sadness settles over the last 50 pages like a classic alt-country tune." The Minneapolis Star Tribune "This was a pretty amazing novelan unapologetically intelligent and cringe-inducingly intimate take on Midwestern hipster culture, armed with a dizzying array of references to art, literature, criticism, and of course music." Bookslut "Reading Hicks' debut novel is not so much like reading a novel as it is like peering into someone else's soul. . . . It's more an exploration of memory than it is of relationshipwith dizzying forays into country music, jazz, erotica and Plato. Try to keep up, will you? You will be rewarded."The Examiner "Boarded Windows is a stellar work of fiction, not to mention a stellar work on." -Los Angeles Review of Books "Dylan's writing contains gems; you'll want to read slowly so you don't miss them. . . . Read the words, listen to the music; you have good things waiting for you."NewPages "The story of a con man and a know-it-all, set in all your favorite Minneapolis haunts."Star Tribune, "Holiday Books Roundup""[N]uanced with fluid prose and a pensive, melancholy undercurrent..."—Publishers Weekly "This novel calls into question the notion of truth and asks to whom one's story really belongs . . . it is rife with humans desperate for connection, for finding their place in this enigmatic world."—ForeWord "Boarded Windows is a contemporary orphan story singing the music and mood of America's counterculture."—Twin Cities Metro Magazine "Boarded Windows is a shrewd and soulful novel. References (high and low, familiar and obscure) abound in this eloquent and unusual story of not-quite innocence lost. Hicks uses his intimate knowledge of American music to give us a precise portrait of Wade Salem, a self-taught, fast-talking half-genius." —Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia and Eat the Document “Do yourself a favor and read this smart, tender book. The characters will haunt you with their longing, and inspire you with their sweet, caustic wit. Dylan Hicks knows his music and his prose is a song in itself. He's given light to the shuttered and boarded parts of life.” —Sam Lipsyte “As a novel, Dylan Hicks’s Boarded Windows takes a sly, questioning, sidelong glance that keeps both the narrator and his listeners—because this novel is whispered, confided, mused, as much as it is written—continually off balance. As a work of American iconography, it’s a continually hilarious, hopes-dashed account of an indelible American character: the con man.” —Greil Marcus “Boarded Windows is a luminous novel about love and loss. Written with wit, profundity, and compassion, Dylan Hicks’s debut delights in language and music and the joys of being alive. This is a deeply moving book that announces a major talent in American fiction.” —Samantha Gillison "[Boarded Windows is] a rock'n'roll story couched in Proustian delicacy, a Beat reconfiguring of the family that moves towards pomo deconstruction of any reliable relationship—and withal, a hybrid of highly pleasing shape." —Bookforum "[H]ick's narrator . . . has a charm and appeal all his own. With each scene and sentence, he is forever trying to capture the truth of the moment. [T]his constant searching and second guessing . . . makes the narrator all at once alluring, lonely, and naïve, which is perhaps what makes this novel such an apt portrait of the early 1990s." —City Pages "Dylan Hicks, author, freelance writer, and musician, has crafted a novel rich with multi-faceted characters and layer upon layer of the characters' personal histories." —Hazel and Wren "Hicks is a terrific writer who can craft a simile with the best of them."—Kirkus "It's own thing to find your own voice, it's another to create your own language, and I think that's what Dylan does." —Greil Marcus "[T]his book is not merely a postmodern exercise in notions of truth, nor is it merely funny and intelligent; it is fundamentally a sincere and heartbreaking tale of loneliness, a man who comes to realize that the windows in his life, home, and family are inherently boarded up." —Brooklyn Rail “Pop-music references pepper the pages of Hicks’ ambitious debut about the prickly relationship between a father and son. . . . with polished prose that is witty and smart.” —Booklist “Evident in Hicks’ writing is a sense of inevitability that would’ve garnered a thumbs-up from Flannery O’Connor. The sirens of unavoidable heartbreak sound throughout this book, not quite drowned out by all the music and erudite chatter, and you can’t help but want to stick around to watch the storm roll in.” —MPR's 89.3 The Current Local Blog "The novel is a carnival ride of amusing, sad narratives—people telling people the stories of their lives. The problem lies in deciding which of these many stories to believe, determining how and where the source material has been polluted, corrupted, and distorted through time." —MNartists.org "The joy in Hicks' debut arises less from plot than from the writing itself: nuanced, ingenious, perceptive, funny. Music plays a role, but doesn't dominate. A heartfelt sadness settles over the last 50 pages like a classic alt-country tune." —The Minneapolis Star Tribune "This was a pretty amazing novel—an unapologetically intelligent and cringe-inducingly intimate take on Midwestern hipster culture, armed with a dizzying array of references to art, literature, criticism, and of course music." —Bookslut "Reading Hicks' debut novel is not so much like reading a novel as it is like peering into someone else's soul. . . . It's more an exploration of memory than it is of relationship—with dizzying forays into country music, jazz, erotica and Plato. Try to keep up, will you? You will be rewarded."—The Examiner "Boarded Windows is a stellar work of fiction, not to mention a stellar work on." -Los Angeles Review of Books "Dylan's writing contains gems; you'll want to read slowly so you don't miss them. . . . Read the words, listen to the music; you have good things waiting for you."—NewPages "The story of a con man and a know-it-all, set in all your favorite Minneapolis haunts."—Star Tribune, "Holiday Books Roundup"
£11.39
Coffee House Press The Dig
Book Synopsis"Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscapefor its colors, its creatures, its textures, its scentsis absolutely magnetic."Sarah Waters "A dark, tense, and vital short novel. . . . Profound, powerful, and utterly absorbing."The Guardian "It is a book about the essentials: life and death, cruelty and compassion. It is a book that will get in your bones, and haunt you."Daily Telegraph "Cynan Jones's fourth novel, The Dig, is an extraordinarily powerful worknot in spite of its brevity but because of it. . . . In its marriage of profound lyricism and feeling for place, deep human compassion and unflinching savagery, this brief and beautiful novel is utterly unique."Financial Times Built of the interlocking fates of a badger-baiter and a farmer struggling through lambing season, The Dig unfolds in a stark rural setting where man, animal, and land are at loggerheads. There is no bucolic pastoral here: this is pure, pared-down rural realism, crackling with compressed energy, from a writer of uncommon gifts. Cynan Jones was born near Aberaeron, Wales, in 1975. He is the author of three novels, The Long Dry (winner of a Betty Trask Award, 2007), Everything I Found on the Beach (2011), and The Dig (2014), winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. He is also the author of Bird, Blood, Snow (2012), the retelling of a medieval Welsh myth. The Dig is his first novel published in the United States.Trade Review[I]ntense and remarkably condensed . . . This is a novel with a heft far beyond its size. . . .[The Dig is] a kind of diptych about violence, loss, and the different ways one can be trapped. It is absolutely unflinching."New York Times Book Review While the action of the story is compelling, the real pleasures lie in Jones's language and meditations on grief. In prose that calls to mind both the severity of Cormac McCarthy and the psychological lucidity of John Updike, Jones explores the intricacies of Daniel's mourning . . . a refreshing counterpoint to back-to-the-land idealism.”Publishers Weekly, starred review "[A] piercing novella . . . Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical."Kirkus, starred review Both Jones’s novel and most of Faulkner’s fiction challenge the always-fashionable idea that complex, interesting stories are about cosmopolitans wrestling with the tyranny of choice. . . The complexity in The Dig, as in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, comes from Jones allowing us to inhabit this struggle directly.”The Los Angeles Review Those sounding the knell for traditional stories may have a hard time explaining books like Cynan Jones’s The Dig, a swift, elegant novella . . . Jones’s language dazzles, he uses his stunning prose to tell a realistic story about the realities of loss and grief.”Huffington Post Jones weaves together the stories of two rural Welshmen laboring during lambing season to evoke grief, hope, ambition, and revulsion in a way that feels both eerily familiar and utterly new.” Los Angeles Public Library Jones' prose clips along at an unnerving pace, barely giving you time to process the previous beautiful image, before knocking you dead with the next one.”Green Apple Books There was a moment in this book so exquisite, so moving, that it carried the book right onto my top ten list, badger-baiting and all.”Brazos Bookstore There are moments in Cynan Jones’ flawless short novel that literally left me breathless.”Star Tribune Jones is remarkably subtle and sketches the duality of his creations in the cleanest of strokes. And while his bloodier scenes are indeed gut-wrenching, they are stunningly composed: raw, visceral, adrenaline-infused writing that prompts us to flinch and quail but nonetheless keep turning the pages . . . haunting and beautiful and deserves to be read at one sitting not devoured, but savored.”Star Tribune The textures bend back and forth on one another, trading their friction, waiting, incubating. Even without any clear release, it is in this sense of meditation between opposite forces in the same land that we are carried, turned and turned as if in winds that have blown somewhere not far off in our world, one where the textured silences might hide as much menace as the loudest wailing." Vice There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil. It's a bitter pill made easy to swallow thanks to art and its paean to life. The Dig is about cruelty, isolation and loss in a dark age.”Shelf Awareness The Dig is one of the most taut, haunting reading experience you’re likely to have this year.”Vol. 1 Brooklyn The Dig is a warren of inquiry into vulnerability and violence, isolation and loss, and the limits of the human spirit.”Guernica Cynan Jones' The Dig marries a sense of place (in this case, the Welsh countryside) to its story as well as any book published this year.”Largehearted Boy Jones’s perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills."Library Journal A poignantly stripped down exploration of life, love, and human cruelty that reminds us that we are all joined in a unified humanity.”Lisa Lucas, The Scofield A quietly overwhelming masterpiece of love, degeneration and the merciless landscape of grief”Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon--once you open it, there's no going back. Inside, even the language feels somehow warped by the brutality and despair and longing at its center. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden. This book will collapse you into its single point of infinite heaviness, and you'll love it.”Elliot Bay Book Company I found your greatest accomplishment in The Dig to rest in its emotional power. This is a profoundly affecting work about grief and love.”Green Apple Books on the Park Jones’s stark tale takes on elemental power, becomes dark, merciless and unforgettable.”Lively Arts Articulated in quietly beautiful language.”Full Stop Jones doesn’t shy away from the stark realities of grief, cruelty, or isolation; his prose doesn’t tend to the pastoral, but has its own beauty even when the story takes a brutal turn.”BookRiot "The Dig ultimately reveals a dark and richly textured story with impressive staying power.”Atticus Reviews A muscular book, tackling both the brutality and raw vulnerability of life without wincing.”Hazel & Wren "I marvel at Cynan Jones' ability to pull off the remarkable feat of writing a stark novel that's suffused with tenderness. His ability to navigate the intersections of psychology and place, makes The Dig a haunting portrait of an elemental world that many of us have never known, but that rings true in our bones."Stephen Sparks of Green Apple Books "Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscapefor its colours, its creatures, its textures, its scentsis absolutely magnetic"Sarah Waters [Cynan’s] work is imbued with the spirit of that land and speaks powerfully of lives trapped there.”Electric Literature Jones’ sentences bristle with foreboding . . . Jones seems to be playing with the idea of the nature of man, of those who live closer in tune with the laws of nature than with those of humanityJones, like great poet-novelists, fills his book with beautiful sentences.”Electric Literature "There's something of John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and the Old Testament to this short, sharp, brutal and bewitching tale . . . Beauty and barbarity, tenderness and heartlessness are mixed in prose that reads like stark poetry. There's almost too much truth in this unforgettable novel. But great beauty too”Monocle "The Dig marries the beauty-bound surreal cloudiness of Robinson with the visceral violence of McCarthy. . . The Dig is as short and tenacious as a rabid dog and as tender and beautiful as a loving one. Reading it is an experience all its own. Jones writes into the extremes of violence and tenderness, and you, as a reader, feel this in a wholly visceral way." Full Stop This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon--once you open it, there's no going back. Inside, even the language feels somehow warped by the brutality and despair and longing at its center. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden. This book will collapse you into its single point of infinite heaviness, and you'll love it.”Shelf Talker This is a bantamweight of a book, light on its feet but packing a wallop.”The Rumpus Lambing doesn’t always produce little dolls. Freaks and monsters don’t come from imagination. Nature grows them without a second thought. As Jones tells us in this extraordinary novel, they can’t exactly be obliterated.”The Fanzine A simplistic and masterfully executed portrait of good vs. evil.”Growler If you like dark, brutal, magnificently written short novels that pack an enormous punch, this is the book for you! . . . This book sucks all the air from the room before releasing its explosive ending.”BookRiot There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil. It's a bitter pill made easy to swallow thanks to art and its paean to life. The Dig is about cruelty, isolation and loss in a dark age.”Shelf Awareness for Readers Fate” in this case is really the guiding intelligence of author Cynan Jones, who has the knack for getting under the skin of a story and imparting truth about the fundamental nature of things. Brutal and tender by turns, The Dig proceeds at an inexorable pace and once begun, all but insists that the reader follow it all the way to the end.”NW Book Lovers "Its power is undeniable and its brevity is part of that power, as is the beauty of the language, in the same way a poem can sometimes have a stronger emotional punch than a novel. . . . Jones is a fearless writer, and this is an accomplished work."Truthdig The Dig is a muscular, sinewy book. It reads like Cormac McCarthy meeting Ted Hughes down a dark country lane. Altogether The Dig is nasty, brutish and short, and thoroughly memorable”John Self, Asylum The pairing of these two characters is brilliant. Both their life circumstances and their professions compliment and contrast beautifully like the rural setting of the farm and country: rustic trials of identity, showing the delicate relationship between nature and man, independence and conformity. And, of course, getting to read Jones’s expertly crafted prose is a pleasure all in itself.”Delta Howl Gripping story of people living alongside animals in the Welsh countryside.” Fader Dark, tense and vital . . . Jones's spare prose is reminiscent of early Ian McEwan, although several similes are more adventurous . . . The Dig is brilliantly alive; a profound, powerful and utterly absorbing portrayal of a subterranean rural world”The Guardian (UK) "The Dig epitomizes the power and economy of the novella at its masterful best."The Guardian (UK) "I treasure books such as A Kestrel for a Knave, Cynan Jones's The Dig . . . for engaging with this marginal pastoral tradition, showing the depths of its attachments to nature, and for refusing to treat those attachments in a romantic nativist way."The Guardian (UK) "Cynan Jones’s fourth novel, The Dig, is an extraordinarily powerful worknot in spite of its brevity but because of it . . . In its marriage of profound lyricism and feeling for place, deep human compassion and unflinching savagery, this brief and beautiful novel is utterly unique."Financial Times (UK) Dramatic, beautifully drawn and powerfully immediate . . . Jones has a wonderful eye and his prose can feel as ruminative as a sheep's slow deliberate chewing”The Sunday Times (UK) "It is a book about the essentials: life and death, cruelty and compassion. It is a book that will get in your bones, and haunt you"Daily Telegraph (UK) A small, beautifully-formed tale of loss set against the brutality of badger baiting . . . Jones proves that the short novel can be as epic, and stylistically demanding as a long one. Set amid hostile nature, it reflects on loss, mourning and how the natural cycle of death and decay impacts on the soul. Not bad at 176 pages.”Arifa Akbar on the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize finalists, Independent (UK) "The Dig explores its central themesloss, isolation, naturethrough dry, punchy storytelling. Each sentence has been neatly sculpted to develop a rich poetry from the stuff of rural life."New Statesman (UK) The plot is winningly sparse. The first twenty pages possess a sharp exactitude, like a taut line of barbed wire. The detail of the prose is remarkable.”Literary Review (UK) The Dig is a marvelous novel . . . It is raw, brutal stuff, and Jones tells it with freshly scoured clarity. There are echoes of Ted Hughes, Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway. It can be read like poetry, letting the words resonate in the skull until the tantalising patterns of its deeper meaning emerge”The Times (UK) The Dig is short, dark, intense . . . It's raw, brutal stuff”'Our Critics' Choice', The Times (UK) "A powerful novel about isolation and loss, written in wonderful pared-down prose, from a former Betty Trask award-winner”Observer (UK) "Must Reads" By turns chilling and haunting, The Dig is a visceral indictment of the continuities between the use and abuse of animals, and a meditation on the casual violence of ordinary men.”Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution A brilliant noveltense, tough and haunting.”Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine Take equal pinches of Hemingway and McCarthy, mix them with a huge spadeful of wild Welsh and wondrous originality, and you get The Dig. It's brave and necessary and relevant in that it steers us into a contemplation of the world's beauties by forcing us to consider their extinction. It is angry and heartbreaking and profoundly moving. Truly, it stirs the soul”Niall Griffiths“[I]ntense and remarkably condensed . . . This is a novel with a heft far beyond its size. . . .[The Dig is] a kind of diptych about violence, loss, and the different ways one can be trapped. It is absolutely unflinching."—New York Times Book Review “While the action of the story is compelling, the real pleasures lie in Jones's language and meditations on grief. In prose that calls to mind both the severity of Cormac McCarthy and the psychological lucidity of John Updike, Jones explores the intricacies of Daniel's mourning . . . a refreshing counterpoint to back-to-the-land idealism.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review "[A] piercing novella . . . Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical."—Kirkus, starred review “Both Jones’s novel and most of Faulkner’s fiction challenge the always-fashionable idea that complex, interesting stories are about cosmopolitans wrestling with the tyranny of choice. . . The complexity in The Dig, as in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, comes from Jones allowing us to inhabit this struggle directly.”—The Los Angeles Review “Those sounding the knell for traditional stories may have a hard time explaining books like Cynan Jones’s The Dig, a swift, elegant novella . . . Jones’s language dazzles, he uses his stunning prose to tell a realistic story about the realities of loss and grief.”—Huffington Post “Jones weaves together the stories of two rural Welshmen laboring during lambing season to evoke grief, hope, ambition, and revulsion in a way that feels both eerily familiar and utterly new.” —Los Angeles Public Library “Jones' prose clips along at an unnerving pace, barely giving you time to process the previous beautiful image, before knocking you dead with the next one.”—Green Apple Books “There was a moment in this book so exquisite, so moving, that it carried the book right onto my top ten list, badger-baiting and all.”—Brazos Bookstore “There are moments in Cynan Jones’ flawless short novel that literally left me breathless.”—Star Tribune “Jones is remarkably subtle and sketches the duality of his creations in the cleanest of strokes. And while his bloodier scenes are indeed gut-wrenching, they are stunningly composed: raw, visceral, adrenaline-infused writing that prompts us to flinch and quail but nonetheless keep turning the pages . . . haunting and beautiful and deserves to be read at one sitting — not devoured, but savored.”—Star Tribune “The textures bend back and forth on one another, trading their friction, waiting, incubating. Even without any clear release, it is in this sense of meditation between opposite forces in the same land that we are carried, turned and turned as if in winds that have blown somewhere not far off in our world, one where the textured silences might hide as much menace as the loudest wailing." —Vice “There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil. It's a bitter pill made easy to swallow thanks to art and its paean to life. The Dig is about cruelty, isolation and loss in a dark age.”—Shelf Awareness “The Dig is one of the most taut, haunting reading experience you’re likely to have this year.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn “The Dig is a warren of inquiry into vulnerability and violence, isolation and loss, and the limits of the human spirit.”—Guernica “Cynan Jones' The Dig marries a sense of place (in this case, the Welsh countryside) to its story as well as any book published this year.”—Largehearted Boy “Jones’s perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills."—Library Journal “A poignantly stripped down exploration of life, love, and human cruelty that reminds us that we are all joined in a unified humanity.”—Lisa Lucas, The Scofield “A quietly overwhelming masterpiece of love, degeneration and the merciless landscape of grief”—Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing “This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon--once you open it, there's no going back. Inside, even the language feels somehow warped by the brutality and despair and longing at its center. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden. This book will collapse you into its single point of infinite heaviness, and you'll love it.”—Elliot Bay Book Company “I found your greatest accomplishment in The Dig to rest in its emotional power. This is a profoundly affecting work about grief and love.”—Green Apple Books on the Park “Jones’s stark tale takes on elemental power, becomes dark, merciless and unforgettable.”—Lively Arts “Articulated in quietly beautiful language.”—Full Stop “Jones doesn’t shy away from the stark realities of grief, cruelty, or isolation; his prose doesn’t tend to the pastoral, but has its own beauty even when the story takes a brutal turn.”—BookRiot "The Dig ultimately reveals a dark and richly textured story with impressive staying power.”—Atticus Reviews “A muscular book, tackling both the brutality and raw vulnerability of life without wincing.”—Hazel & Wren "I marvel at Cynan Jones' ability to pull off the remarkable feat of writing a stark novel that's suffused with tenderness. His ability to navigate the intersections of psychology and place, makes The Dig a haunting portrait of an elemental world that many of us have never known, but that rings true in our bones."—Stephen Sparks of Green Apple Books "Jones's sense of place is acute, and his passion for the landscape—for its colours, its creatures, its textures, its scents—is absolutely magnetic"—Sarah Waters “[Cynan’s] work is imbued with the spirit of that land and speaks powerfully of lives trapped there.”—Electric Literature “Jones’ sentences bristle with foreboding . . . Jones seems to be playing with the idea of the nature of man, of those who live closer in tune with the laws of nature than with those of humanityJones, like great poet-novelists, fills his book with beautiful sentences.”—Electric Literature "There's something of John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and the Old Testament to this short, sharp, brutal and bewitching tale . . . Beauty and barbarity, tenderness and heartlessness are mixed in prose that reads like stark poetry. There's almost too much truth in this unforgettable novel. But great beauty too”—Monocle "The Dig marries the beauty-bound surreal cloudiness of Robinson with the visceral violence of McCarthy. . . The Dig is as short and tenacious as a rabid dog and as tender and beautiful as a loving one. Reading it is an experience all its own. Jones writes into the extremes of violence and tenderness, and you, as a reader, feel this in a wholly visceral way." —Full Stop “This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon--once you open it, there's no going back. Inside, even the language feels somehow warped by the brutality and despair and longing at its center. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden. This book will collapse you into its single point of infinite heaviness, and you'll love it.”—Shelf Talker “This is a bantamweight of a book, light on its feet but packing a wallop.”—The Rumpus “Lambing doesn’t always produce little dolls. Freaks and monsters don’t come from imagination. Nature grows them without a second thought. As Jones tells us in this extraordinary novel, they can’t exactly be obliterated.”—The Fanzine “A simplistic and masterfully executed portrait of good vs. evil.”—Growler “If you like dark, brutal, magnificently written short novels that pack an enormous punch, this is the book for you! . . . This book sucks all the air from the room before releasing its explosive ending.”—BookRiot “There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil. It's a bitter pill made easy to swallow thanks to art and its paean to life. The Dig is about cruelty, isolation and loss in a dark age.”—Shelf Awareness for Readers ““Fate” in this case is really the guiding intelligence of author Cynan Jones, who has the knack for getting under the skin of a story and imparting truth about the fundamental nature of things. Brutal and tender by turns, The Dig proceeds at an inexorable pace and once begun, all but insists that the reader follow it all the way to the end.”—NW Book Lovers "Its power is undeniable and its brevity is part of that power, as is the beauty of the language, in the same way a poem can sometimes have a stronger emotional punch than a novel. . . . Jones is a fearless writer, and this is an accomplished work."—Truthdig “The Dig is a muscular, sinewy book. It reads like Cormac McCarthy meeting Ted Hughes down a dark country lane. Altogether The Dig is nasty, brutish and short, and thoroughly memorable”—John Self, Asylum “The pairing of these two characters is brilliant. Both their life circumstances and their professions compliment and contrast beautifully like the rural setting of the farm and country: rustic trials of identity, showing the delicate relationship between nature and man, independence and conformity. And, of course, getting to read Jones’s expertly crafted prose is a pleasure all in itself.”—Delta Howl “Gripping story of people living alongside animals in the Welsh countryside.” —Fader “Dark, tense and vital . . . Jones's spare prose is reminiscent of early Ian McEwan, although several similes are more adventurous . . . The Dig is brilliantly alive; a profound, powerful and utterly absorbing portrayal of a subterranean rural world”—The Guardian (UK) "The Dig epitomizes the power and economy of the novella at its masterful best."—The Guardian (UK) "I treasure books such as A Kestrel for a Knave, Cynan Jones's The Dig . . . for engaging with this marginal pastoral tradition, showing the depths of its attachments to nature, and for refusing to treat those attachments in a romantic nativist way."—The Guardian (UK) "Cynan Jones’s fourth novel, The Dig, is an extraordinarily powerful work—not in spite of its brevity but because of it . . . In its marriage of profound lyricism and feeling for place, deep human compassion and unflinching savagery, this brief and beautiful novel is utterly unique."—Financial Times (UK) “Dramatic, beautifully drawn and powerfully immediate . . . Jones has a wonderful eye and his prose can feel as ruminative as a sheep's slow deliberate chewing”—The Sunday Times (UK) "It is a book about the essentials: life and death, cruelty and compassion. It is a book that will get in your bones, and haunt you"—Daily Telegraph (UK) “A small, beautifully-formed tale of loss set against the brutality of badger baiting . . . Jones proves that the short novel can be as epic, and stylistically demanding as a long one. Set amid hostile nature, it reflects on loss, mourning and how the natural cycle of death and decay impacts on the soul. Not bad at 176 pages.”—Arifa Akbar on the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize finalists, Independent (UK) "The Dig explores its central themes—loss, isolation, nature—through dry, punchy storytelling. Each sentence has been neatly sculpted to develop a rich poetry from the stuff of rural life."—New Statesman (UK) “The plot is winningly sparse. The first twenty pages possess a sharp exactitude, like a taut line of barbed wire. The detail of the prose is remarkable.”—Literary Review (UK) “The Dig is a marvelous novel . . . It is raw, brutal stuff, and Jones tells it with freshly scoured clarity. There are echoes of Ted Hughes, Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway. It can be read like poetry, letting the words resonate in the skull until the tantalising patterns of its deeper meaning emerge”—The Times (UK) “The Dig is short, dark, intense . . . It's raw, brutal stuff”—'Our Critics' Choice', The Times (UK) "A powerful novel about isolation and loss, written in wonderful pared-down prose, from a former Betty Trask award-winner”—Observer (UK) "Must Reads" “By turns chilling and haunting, The Dig is a visceral indictment of the continuities between the use and abuse of animals, and a meditation on the casual violence of ordinary men.”—Patrick Flanery, author of Absolution “A brilliant novel—tense, tough and haunting.”—Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine “Take equal pinches of Hemingway and McCarthy, mix them with a huge spadeful of wild Welsh and wondrous originality, and you get The Dig. It's brave and necessary and relevant in that it steers us into a contemplation of the world's beauties by forcing us to consider their extinction. It is angry and heartbreaking and profoundly moving. Truly, it stirs the soul”—Niall Griffiths
£11.39
Coffee House Press Among Strange Victims
Book Synopsis"Brief, brilliantly written, and kissed by a sense of the absurd....like a much lazier, Mexico City version of Dostoevsky's Underground Man."John Powers, Fresh AirDaniel Saldaña París knows how to talk about those other tragedies populating daily life: a boring, unwanted marriage; mind numbing office work; family secrets. He builds on those bricks of tedium a greatly enjoyable and splendidly well-written suburban farce.” Yuri HerreraRodrigo likes his vacant lot, its resident chicken, and being left alone. But when passivity finds him accidentally married to Cecilia, he trades Mexico City for the sun-bleached desolation of his hometown and domestic life with Cecilia for the debauched company of a poet, a philosopher, and Micaela, whose allure includes the promise of time travel. Earthy, playful, and sly, Among Strange Victims is a psychedelic ode to the pleasures of not measuring up.Daniel Saldaña París (born Mexico City, 1984) is an essayist, poet, and novelist whose work has been translated into English, French, and Swedish and anthologized, most recently in Mexico20: New Voices, Old Traditions, published in the United Kingdom by Pushkin Press. Among Strange Victims is his first novel to appear in the United States. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.Trade Review"Great fun are the jabs at academia, Mexico City and the dusty town where the action, or inaction, moves after Rodrigo meets Marcelo, a Spanish cretin with a Ph.D. in aesthetics. These flameless flâneurs humph and hump, personifying urban malaise." —New York Times Sunday Book Review “Full of odd twists and surprises. Among the high points are Saldaña París' exasperated but affectionate paeans to 'the immense, beautiful city' that is Mexico's capital. Though a study of slothfulness and its discontents, a welcome book on which the author has clearly expended energy.” —Kirkus “The English debut by the young and talented Daniel Saldaña Paris, Among Strange Victims is the definitive millennial existentialist novel of Mexico City.” —The Culture Trip “The novel takes some bizarre turns as Marcelo leads Rodrigo into experiments involving drugs, tequila, hypnosis and more, all in the name of transformation. If the young man’s notion of radical change is to take part in his life rather than observe it from afar, he’s off to a good start.” —New York Times “Saldaña París’s first novel to be translated Stateside is a leisurely story of slacking off that’s nicely conveyed in a sharp, cynical tone. . . . Read this messy, shaggy picaresque for its ample page-by-page pleasures, which include devilishly clever syntax, a charming tendency to digress, and satisfying flashes of Rodrigo and Marcelo getting their act together.” —Publishers Weekly "Brief, brilliantly written, and kissed by a sense of the absurd....like a much lazier, Mexico City version of Dostoevsky's Underground Man." —Fresh Air “MacSweeney’s brilliant English translation of this odd, Kafkaeque and conniving novel is not to be missed.”—The Guardian "Partnership is important, says this young, slacker, thirtysomething Mexican writer, even if it’s only with a hen in a vacant lot." —The Rumpus “It’s a novel that sneaks up on you in the best possible way.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn “Daniel Saldaña París’s Among Strange Victims... is, despite the questions surrounding the Latin American canon, a natural successor in the Latin American oeuvre. Saldaña París eases forward from the Crack and McOndo movements, yet still evokes the hues of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch. But, perhaps most crucially, Among Strange Victims still wonders what this Latin American-ness could mean.” —Full Stop The real life absurdities surrounding Trump’s visit are definitely stranger than the fictional absurdities Rodrigo faces, though I can’t help but wonder if somehow these narratives are cosmically linked. Daniel Saldaña París’ pulse on the Mexican psyche feels that precise, that honest, that timely.” —Ploughshares "The novel teases and revises questions about how to live a meaningful life with agency by turning them into a thought experiment that Saldana París handles with formal invention and a Millennial twist." —Words Without Borders “Daniel Saldaña Paris’ first novel to be translated into English is an expertly composed, leisurely read that sucks you in but never spits you out. . . . this book is a must-read.” —Largehearted Boy “For all Saldaña París' sharp wit, Among Strange Victims is about waking up to the world's brighter possibilities.” —NPR “Although its stylized narrative can be an acquired taste, `Among Strange Victims’ is deceptively affecting.” —Star Tribune “It’s a novel that comes at you from odd angles, making a memorable impression as it goes.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn "In an easygoing, oddly entrancing style, París presents a meandering plot . . . but the events of the narrative pale in comparison to the surprising pleasure of the thoroughly offbeat prose. . . . Pari's has mastered the art of spinning an outlandish, entertaining tale." —Booklist “It is impossible to read Among Strange Victims without being charmed by its wit and disarmed by its fierce and mysterious languor. In this novel, Daniel Saldaña París asks how one should cope with the impossible burden of living your own life—and gives a graceful riddle of an answer that will linger with you long after the book is done.” —Alexandra Kleeman “Translator Christina MacSweeney has done an excellent job bringing the intelligent vitality of Paris’s prose into English. . . What has happened to the life of the artist, Among Strange Victims asks. Why do we so often build critical distances between ourselves and our lives? And how can we bridge those gaps?” Electric Literature “Saldaña París is a Montreal-based poet, essayist, and novelist, born in Mexico City, and, as this darkly humorous and thoughtful novel — both in the sense of being contemplative and packed full of an onrush of thoughts — proves, is a welcome infusion of vitality into North American literature.” —Bookslut “... there is something uncannily Pitolean about this novel. And that is a very good thing.”—Three Percent “Daniel Saldaña París’s Among Strange Victims, translated by Christina MacSweeney, immediately pulls the reader into its universe. It does so with such thorough and seamless skill that the reader becomes a victim of this strange, off-kilter world.” —Cleaver Magazine “[Among Strange Victims is] an impressive work by a talented young writer.” —Largehearted Boy “As I read [Among Strange Victims], I felt I was witnessing a great performance. It reminded me a little of young Mozart showing off at the emperor’s golden harpsichord, giggling and improvising variations on Salieri’s welcome march, startling all the wigged and powdered Viennese stiffs. And I sensed something desperate and inflamed in the writing too, as though the author assumed all along that nobody would ever read his book. That’s probably what I like most about it—the cocky, indulgent, nihilistic virtuosity.” —BOMB “Quirky and absurd, it’s a funny, shambling look at the benefits (and drawbacks) of living life at your own lazy pace.” —Men’s Journal "Saldaña París writes with a gifted and confident prose that is as much the star of this singular novel as its unforgettable characters and delighting plot. This young Mexican writer (and poet, too) is surely one to watch, and if Among Strange Victims is but a harbinger of what’s to come, then Saldaña París may well have a long, fruitful, and fantastic career ahead of himself.” —Jeremy Garber “Critics have drawn comparisons between París’s latest novel (his first to be translated in the United States) and the work of his blockbuster predecessor, Roberto Bolaño.” —Brooklyn Magazine “Daniel Saldaña París, following in the tradition of di Lampedusa, shows that non-writers—that is to say, those who don’t exclusively cultivate what’s known as a literary life—are the ones who make the best books.” —Mario Bellatin “I rewrote the first forty pages of Among Strange Victims several times over two years before finding the right tone for it. It started being a very serious, philosophical novel, but with each new version it became more and more humorous.” —The Quarterly ConversationTable of ContentsThe Third Person Fundamental Considerations on Something The Shrubs of the Terrestrial Sphere The Future of Art Epilogue
£12.34
Coffee House Press Amateurs
Book SynopsisPraise for Dylan Hicks: "Hicks is a terrific writer who can craft a simile with the best of them." --Kirkus Reviews "The joy in Hicks' debut arises less from plot than from the writing itself: nuanced, ingenious, perceptive, funny." --The Star Tribune "Do yourself a favor and read this smart, tender book. The characters will haunt you with their longing, and inspire you with their sweet, caustic wit." --Sam Lipsyte Archer is a semi-celebrated novelist and sex-toy heir. His best friend, John, is as earnest as Archer is feckless. John's girlfriend, Sara, envies Archer's writing career. And Sara's roommate, Lucas, wishes he'd never lost his girlfriend to the man. Money, friendship, and resentment unspool in the conversations we have as we're coming of age and coming to grips. Dylan Hicks is a writer and musician. His first novel, Boarded Windows, was published in 2012, along with a companion album of original songs, Dylan Hicks Sings Bolling Greene. His journalism has appeared in the Village Voice, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Star Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Nina Hale, and their son, Jackson.Trade Review"Hicks, a Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter, is winningly deft with language. From the opening paragraph, neither commas nor em dashes can rein in his enthusiasm for the craft of storytelling, which Hicks embraces with contagious energy and sharp humor." --New York Times Sunday Book Review "[A] sprightly tale about friendship and courtship, money, love, assorted complications--and writers. Felicitous characters and a scrumptious plot make Hicks' second novel refreshing and fun." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review "[Amateurs is] a sharply observed and very funny novel ... [Hicks] has perfect pitch." --The Guardian, "Dylan Hicks: 'Are millennials concerned about selling out any more?'" "An improbable and wildly enjoyable mix of a comedy of manners, a road-trip story, and a slacker coming-of-age tale. Hicks manages to turns what could easily have made readers stumble--multiple protagonists in multiple time lines--into a winning narrative style... Though the story lines themselves are engaging, it is Hicks' ear for dialogue, humor, and detail that makes the novel shine." --Booklist "A bright, perceptive story about friends trying with mixed results to wrestle with the pressures of adulthood... Hicks does a near-perfect job tracing each character's evolving needs, desires and resentments over the course of seven years." --Los Angeles Times "[T]heir games of one-upmanship, their tete-a-tetes, give the novel a fun repartee, in addition to highlighting Hicks's ear for dialogue." --Heavy Feather Review "These plot lines...are meticulously woven together to create for the reader a sensation of precarious narrative convergence." --Brooklyn Rail "The setup of Hicks' novel is the stuff of classic comic fiction; the minute details and anxieties that surround its characters, however, are what endures." --Star Tribune "Hicks [ ... ] has fashioned a droll commentary about ambition among the would-be literati and has written some of the funniest prose in recent years."--Kenyon Review Online "Amateurs is an ambitious and accomplished novel that appears to be relaxed and easy-going. It is generously plotted and peopled, but I never sensed the author's effort or ambition." --Extreme Legibility "Here's the kind of book--ironic but humane, erudite yet playful--that makes you want to read it in big chunks." --Minnesota Monthly "The other thing that Dylan Hicks does so well--he's a marvelous writer." --KUOW, "The Record" review "Hicks can time a plot fuse perfectly." --Atticus Reviews "Dylan Hicks' second novel Amateurs is one of the most fun books I have read all year, an unforgettable coming of age story." --Largehearted Boy "Hicks' strengths lie in fastidious detail and witty dialogue; both abound in this book." --Crave Online "Supremely elegant, accurately human, unceasingly funny ... Amateurs is a sublime literary treat by our hinterland Anthony Powell. In a kinder world, there would be a new book by 'Hicksy' every year." --Ed Park, author of Personal DaysTable of ContentsPrologue Part One: Prenuptial Part Two: Postnuptial
£12.34
Coffee House Press Everything I Found on the Beach
Book SynopsisPraise for Cynan Jones:"[A] piercing novella. . . . Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical." Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Jones's perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills." Library Journal"This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon. . . . It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden." Elliot Bay Book CompanyJones is a Welsh writer who has been compared to Cormac McCarthy, but his sparse style also recalls Ernest Hemingway.” Kirkus, "Foreign Influence""There's nothing bucolic about this elemental, extraordinary tale of good and evil." Shelf AwarenessJones deftly explores his characters’ motives, particularly the hope they cling to despite the risks they take.” BooklistIt’s as if the novel is the slowed-down spinning of a bullet through the grooves of a barrel, waiting to be released into the world.” Vol. 1 BrooklynDarkly luminous . . . [Jones] builds tension in an ultimately gripping and important story that transcends its own bleakness.” Library JournalWhen a net is set, and that's the way you choose, you'll hit it. Hold, a Welsh fisherman, Grzegorz, a Polish migrant worker, and Stringer, an Irish gangster, all want the chance to make their lives better. One kilo of cocaine and the sea tie them together in a fatal series of decisions.Cynan Jones was born near Aberaeron on the west coast of Wales in 1975. He is the author of four short novels, most recently The Dig (Coffee House Press, 2014), which won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize in 2014 and the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015. His work has been translated into several languages, and short stories have aired on BBC Radio and appeared in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta.Everything I Found on the Beach is the second of three United States releases of his work by Coffee House Press.Trade Review“Jones' somber tone and damp, overcast setting help make the novel a kind of critique of the new economy that put both men in such desperate straits. . . . A striking and careful portrait of ambition crashing against reality.” —Kirkus, starred review “With this thriller-like plot in place, Jones is free to exercise his considerable gifts as a stylist, and breathtaking descriptions of landscape and animal life abound.” —Publishers Weekly “Jones is a Welsh writer who has been compared to Cormac McCarthy, but his sparse style also recalls Ernest Hemingway.” —Kirkus Reviews “As a novel full of skewed moral judgments and reckless acts, it has plenty of emotional clout and immense narrative pull. . . . There are brief spurts of bloody, visceral prose—fish gutted, rabbits skinned, cattle stunned—along with moments of striking lyricism.” —Star Tribune "When it comes to the act of writing itself, you just have to forget labels exist and listen to the demands of the story.” —Publishers Weekly “The novel as a whole illuminates the inner, fragile struggles of men and the dangerous visible struggles that result when certain paths are chosen.” —NewPages "Jones’ book is a blunt fable about desperation, and unlike the shadow comedy it depicts, it’s built to last." —Star Tribune "Jones offers gorgeous observation of nature's indifference to human intervention, and juxtaposes it with characters who define themselves by their inability to influence the manmade systems by which they are held in check. There is no hope—until there is." —Heavy Feather "Jones strips his prose to the heartbeat minimum. Its plaintive nudity is like the sea itself, so present in this novel, 'like some broken metronome for the earth.'" —Cleaver Magazine “Everything I Found on the Beach, a compact but powerful novel by Cynan Jones, might just be one of the rawest and honest interpretations of what the sea is to us.” —Summerset Review "For those of us who write, tell and read stories to make sense of the world, I feel this short novel is a work of great insight. It does that all-too-rare thing which is to spool on in your mind after you’ve read it.” —Electric Literature “Raw, abrasive, and compact, Jones’ short novels carry a muscular, confident tone.” —Hazel & Wren “A heartbreakingly relatable narrative.” —Cultured Vultures “Cynan Jones's Everything I Found on the Beach is a remarkable novel, quiet but powerful. . . . Thought-provoking and somehow uplifting, in its beautiful, artistic consideration of life itself.” —Shelf Awareness "Filled with poverty, heartbreak, and danger, Jones’ novel poses some very simple but timeless questions." —Vol. 1 Brooklyn “My old grandmother had a pressure cooker built of fine and heavy metal that would hop and bang on the stove as it worked but only slowly, reluctantly, it seemed, offer itself the relief of a strong, composed scream. In the work of Cynan Jones—never more so than in Everything I Found on the Beach—we find a similar mechanism at play, except that it is the pages, full of sturdily encased fury, that hop and bang, and it is us at the book’s end who turn to wall or pillow or wide, empty world and scream. This is powerful writing. Let there be no doubt about it.” —Laird Hunt
£11.39
Coffee House Press Brightfellow
Book SynopsisPraise for Rikki Ducornet: A novelist whose vocabulary sweats with a kind of lyrical heat.” New York Times Ducornetsurrealist, absurdist, pure anarchist at timesis one of our most accomplished writers, adept at seizing on the perfect details and writing with emotion and cool detachment simultaneously. I love her style because it is penetrating and precise but also sensual without being overwrought. You experience a Ducornet novel with all of your senses.” Jeff VanderMeer Linguistically explosive. . . . One of the most interesting American writers around.” The Nation Ducornet celebrates the playful and rebellious nature of art, and the anarchic ability of the imagination to subvert physical limitations.” Times Literary Supplement A feral boy comes of age on a campus decadent with starched sheets, sweating cocktails, and homemade jams. Stub is the cause of that missing sweater, the pie that disappeared off the cooling rack. Then Stub meets Billy, who takes him in, and Asthma, who enchants him, and all is found, then lost. A fragrant, voluptuous novel of imposture, misplaced affection, and emotional deformity. An artist and writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile.Trade Review“Ms. Ducornet’s novel about a man who `cannot fathom the bottomless secret of his own existence’ casts a lingering spell.” —New York Times “In tracing the shape of what is left behind, Ducornet lends dignity to the universal plight of vanished illusions. We cannot help but empathize with Stub’s perpetual dream, `when everything dissolves and something epic takes over, something coherent, a thing that again and again surpasses itself.’” —Los Angeles Times, "Rikki Ducornet's Brightfellow is a Sophisticated Embodiment of Children's Imagination” “Bursting with vivid imagery, beautiful language, heartbreaking characters, and the striking perspective of an emotionally stunted man in a carefully controlled society, Ducornet’s tale is unique and captivating.” —Booklist “A portrait of a surreal community that defies easy categorization. Like poetry, the novel's central aims are to revel in language and investigate the inner lives of characters who see a world that is more numinous (to borrow a word of Stub's) than the people around them can recognize. This makes Ducornet's choice to focus on anthropologists and young children satisfyingly apt. . . . An endless delight at the sentence level…” —Kirkus “Ducornet has written the oddest of varsity novels, one that anchors its charming caprice, philosophical fancy, and thriller-like pace to the psychological horror that lurks just beyond childhood innocence.” —Publishers Weekly “A dreamily written yet unsentimental meditation on what we do to survive.” —Library Journal “Brimming with lyrical descriptions of the campus and with ornamental characters representing various academic `types,’ Brightfellow is both a portrait of small town American campus life and of the peculiarities of childhood.” —Manhattan Book Review "Rikki Ducornet's novel Brightfellow is surreal and vivid, and cements her status as one of the most talented writers working today." —Largehearted Boy, "Book Notes" “Ducornet’s is a world of surfaces so rich and textured that notions of meaning and interpretation are subsumed under a lush and seductive prose that eventually inhabits readers' minds.” —The Millions “Ducornet’s prose always seduces, fulfills, and rewards. Her novels are prose rich cabinets of curiosity, the lines filled with obscure and puzzling wonders. Brightfellow is no exception.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn ”A delicate and airy novel, Brightfellow combusts with beautiful words and sentences.” —Numero Cinq “[H]ere, the quotidian and the strange will rapidly become intertwined.” —Star Tribune "Brightfellow’s symbolically perfect ending...is true to Ducornet’s thematic lament." —Cleaver Magazine "Linguistically explosive . . . one of the most interesting American writers around." —The Nation “It is Rikki Ducornet’s magic to be able to coax an entire universe—`restless beyond imagining, a universe of rock and flame, whose nature is incandescence’—out of the modest and often grim contours of one man’s life. It’s one man, Brightfellow, whose job it is to simultaneously inhabit and invent and contain and protect and destroy this place of copperheads and academics, bad mothers and islands, a savant scholar and a little girl. He also knows how to break our hearts and fan the fires of hope.” —Kathryn Davis, author of Duplex “Ducornet is a mad maestro of words.” —Seattle Weekly “In Brightfellow, Ducornet… reveals strangeness in the most basic circumstances of life, flooding them in new light.”—Kenyon Review “Beautifully done, Brightfellow is a tiny, but surprisingly complex, gem.” —Powell's, "Staff Picks" “Writer, poet, and artist Ducornet does things with words most authors would never even dream of. . . It’s a novel that's bizarre, engaging, and dark as hell.” —Men's Journal, "The Best Books of July" “Rikki Ducornet has long been known for her surreal, vivid writing. Brightfellow, her latest novel, is no exception.” —KQED “[Brightfellow] focuses its gaze on the refuse of life—things that are lost, tossed out, abandoned—and makes them beautiful through her mastery of imagery and voice.” —Summerset Review, review “Rikki Ducornet, in the effervescent and airy Brightfellow, deftly executes a hefty lightness, the lightest of a bright, light touch that delights and spontaneously combusts right before our eyes. Like an unbounded baron in the trees, like a goat boy on the loose in the groves of academe, this book inscribes a lofty scaffolding of amazing mazes, canopies of wonder. Ignited luminescence, irresistible levitation, iridescent images—the words skip like philosophic stones through a saturated and shimmering exhalation.” —Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Winesburg, Indiana “An engagement with the sometimes fickle quirks of evolution is perhaps Ducornet’s most striking contribution to the art of surrealism and the metafictional terrain of Calvino and Borges. . .As a devout reinterpreter of the world, [Stub] represents the best of Ducornet’s fiction, and the hope of creative, loving life through the experience of play.” —Publishers Weekly, “The Burden of Strangeness”Table of ContentsPart one Part two
£11.39
Coffee House Press Camanchaca
Book SynopsisA long drive across Chile's Atacama desert, traversing "the worn-out puzzle" of a broken familya young man's corrosive intimacy with his mother, the obtrusive cheer of his absentee father, his uncle's unexplained deathoccupies the heart of this novel. Camanchaca is a low fog pushing in from the sea, its moisture sustaining a near-barren landscape. Camanchaca is the discretion that makes a lifelong grief possible. Sometimes, the silences are what bind us.Diego Zúñiga (born 1987) is a Chilean author and journalist. He is the author of two novels and the recipient of the Juegos Literarios Gabriela Mistral and the Chilean National Book and Reading Council Award. He lives in Santiago de Chile.Megan McDowell's translations include books by Alejandro Zambra, Arturo Fontaine, Lina Meruane, and Mariana Enriquez, and have been published in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Tin House, and McSweeney's, among others. She lives in Santiago, Chile.Trade Review“This arresting and deeply affecting read, despite its short length, packs a punch.” —Publishers Weekly “Deftly written, there is much to admire on the page.” —Fanzine “It’s precisely this coolly observant language, deepening with the story, that lets us register the buried despair.” —Library Journal “A smart, straightforward narrative that reveals the varied mood a shared experience can evoke.” —Kirkus Reviews “The simple, elegant narrative braiding- a paternal recto, a maternal verso- serves as both metaphor for a boy who is of two minds about everything and as a driveshaft, propelling the reader to a too-soon ending in a state of horror bordering on awe.” —The Rumpus, “HORN!” review “Camanchaca has one of the strongest novel openings I’ve read in years, a knockout vignette that disarms the reader with a few beats of unnecessarily specific detail, and then seamlessly shifts into fast and steady motion while glancing across a violent mystery all in just a quarter of a page.” —Electric Literature “This slim book promises emotional and intellectual challenges for the intrepid reader.” —Booklist Online “Among this novel’s many merits (which go far beyond the stylistic), Zúñiga has achieved something more: he has depicted, with astonishing perfection, the mediocrity of the Chilean middle class, its simplicity and its emptiness: characters who barely communicate and pass their time watching TV, sleeping, and eating sandwiches wherever they may be; half-brothers who hardly know each other and look at each other with jealousy; families whose only epic, at the end of the day, is an attempt to buy brand-name clothes and take care of a dying dog.” —World Literature Today “The novel is episodic, swinging from the past to the present, with no bit lasting longer than a page. The effect is poetic, and Zúñiga’s bare sentences also resemble the Atacama.” —Colorado Review “Camanchaca is a riddle, a mind game, sometimes maddening but always compelling.” —Star Tribune “The tidy parcels pack jolts of emotion as Zúñiga discloses the foundation of the burdens the young narrator has carried through his life, every page another piece of the sad, damaged puzzle. As powerful as it is spare, Camanchaca is a raw trip through an emotional wasteland.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers “The simple, straightforward prose flies across the dry pages exactly as if Zúñiga were driving you across the desert himself.” —Atticus Review “Camanchaca . . . succeeds at combining the particularity of its setting with scenarios that feel almost classical: a murdered brother and the perversion of the mother-son relationship. But it also dramatizes the struggle to understand the previous generation, whether the truth sought is that of family or country.” —BOMB “An unexpected voice, a new landscape—a sober, risky, unsettling and surprising book.” —Alejandro Zambra “The amiable placidity of Camanchaca’s young narrator attests to a safeguarding remoteness that cannot quite suppress a terrible mounting compulsion to confront his family’s past and be released from its burden of secrets. Diligent but lacking the capacity to form judgments, distressed yet detached, I don’t think I’ve come across a more evocative depiction of the painstaking transition from adolescence into the adult world.” —Claire-Louise Bennett “Diego Zúñiga is the author of an extraordinary first novel. Camanchaca is written with austerity and a laconic and fragmented style that is like the shreds through which we are able to catch glimpses of the landscape through the fog.” —Patricio Pron “Nothing is stated outright in Camanchaca, everything is sounded out, intuited, like silhouettes or protrusions whose contours jut out just barely through cloth. . . . [Zúñiga] veils an entire way of life, a kind of underwater `ethos’ ?in which there nests an invisible substructure of violence, abuse, and desolation.” —Pablo Torche, Letras en línea “A sparse, innovative and heartrending study of a broken family… A debut novella that is quite stunning in its compact emotional heft.” —Brazos Bookstore, “Buyer’s Corner: Best of 2017 So Far” “A thoughtful, even meditative, story of a young man for whom the problems of his parents, the problems of the adult world that he is approaching, are still just beyond his understanding.” —Josh Cook, Porter Square Books “The past converges with the present in this startling debut by Diego Zúñiga. A young man, uncertain in life, penetrates his family’s dysfunctional past during a road trip across the Chilean desert. Taut and fragmented, brilliant and brave,Camanchaca perfectly captures the difficult transition from young man to adult. A small diamond of a novel that once again proves literature can break your heart and infuse the spirit at the same time.” —Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore “This arresting and deeply affecting read, despite its short length, packs a punch.”—Publishers Weekly “Deftly written, there is much to admire on the page.”—Fanzine “...It’s precisely this coolly observant language, deepening with the story, that lets us register the buried despair.”—Library Journal “A smart, straightforward narrative that reveals the varied mood a shared experience can evoke.”—Kirkus Reviews “The simple, elegant narrative braiding- a paternal recto, a maternal verso- serves as both metaphor for a boy who is of two minds about everything and as a driveshaft, propelling the reader to a too-soon ending in a state of horror bordering on awe.”—The Rumpus, "HORN!" review “Camanchaca has one of the strongest novel openings I’ve read in years, a knockout vignette that disarms the reader with a few beats of unnecessarily specific detail, and then seamlessly shifts into fast and steady motion while glancing across a violent mystery all in just a quarter of a page…”—Electric Literature “This slim book promises emotional and intellectual challenges for the intrepid reader.”—Booklist Online “Among this novel’s many merits (which go far beyond the stylistic), Zúñiga has achieved something more: he has depicted, with astonishing perfection, the mediocrity of the Chilean middle class, its simplicity and its emptiness: characters who barely communicate and pass their time watching TV, sleeping, and eating sandwiches wherever they may be; half-brothers who hardly know each other and look at each other with jealousy; families whose only epic, at the end of the day, is an attempt to buy brand-name clothes and take care of a dying dog.”—World Literature Today "...the tidy parcels pack jolts of emotion as Zúñiga discloses the foundation of the burdens the young narrator has carried through his life, every page another piece of the sad, damaged puzzle. As powerful as it is spare, Camanchaca is a raw trip through an emotional wasteland."—Shelf Awareness for Readers, starred review “Camanchaca… succeeds at combining the particularity of its setting with scenarios that feel almost classical: a murdered brother and the perversion of the mother-son relationship. But it also dramatizes the struggle to understand the previous generation, whether the truth sought is that of family or country.”—BOMB "An unexpected voice, a new landscape—a sober, risky, unsettling and surprising book."—Alejandro Zambra “The amiable placidity of Camanchaca’s young narrator attests to a safeguarding remoteness that cannot quite suppress a terrible mounting compulsion to confront his family’s past and be released from its burden of secrets. Diligent but lacking the capacity to form judgments, distressed yet detached, I don’t think I’ve come across a more evocative depiction of the painstaking transition from adolescence into the adult world.”—Claire-Louise Bennett "Diego Zúñiga is the author of an extraordinary first novel. Camanchaca is written with austerity and a laconic and fragmented style that is like the shreds through which we are able to catch glimpses of the landscape through the fog." —Patricio Pron “Nothing is stated outright in Camanchaca, everything is sounded out, intuited, like silhouettes or protrusions whose contours jut out just barely through cloth. . . . [Zúñiga] veils an entire way of life, a kind of underwater `ethos’ ?in which there nests an invisible substructure of violence, abuse, and desolation.”—Pablo Torche, Letras en linea “A thoughtful, even meditative, story of a young man for whom the problems of his parents, the problems of the adult world that he is approaching, are still just beyond his understanding.”—Josh Cook, Porter Square Books “Most impressively, [Camanchaca] can potentially be read three different ways, as two equally solemn stories volley to make one emotionally cloudy journey through the desert fog.” —The Book Table, shelf talker from Patrick Battle “The past converges with the present in this startling debut by Diego Zúñiga. A young man, uncertain in life, penetrates his family’s dysfunctional past during a road trip across the Chilean desert. Taut and fragmented, brilliant and brave, Camanchaca perfectly captures the difficult transition from young man to adult. A small diamond of a novel that once again proves literature can break your heart and infuse the spirit at the same time.”—Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore
£11.39
Coffee House Press Stephen Florida
Book SynopsisIn Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he’s created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study.”Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little LifeFoxcatcher meets The Art of Fielding, Stephen Florida follows a college wrestler in his senior season, when every practice, every match, is a step closer to greatness and a step further from sanity. Profane, manic, and tipping into the uncanny, it's a story of loneliness, obsession, and the drive to leave a mark.Gabe Habash is the fiction reviews editor for Publishers Weekly. He holds an MFA from New York University and lives in New York.Trade Review“In Stephen Florida, Gabe Habash has created a coming-of-age story with its own, often explosive, rhythm and velocity. Habash has a canny sense of how young men speak and behave, and in Stephen, he’s created a singular character: funny, ambitious, affecting, but also deeply troubled, vulnerable, and compellingly strange. This is a shape-shifter of a book, both a dark ode to the mysteries and landscapes of the American West and a complex and convincing character study.” —Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life “Stephen Florida is an unforgettable addition to the canon of great literary eccentrics. At once a chronicle of obsession, a philosophical treatise, and a deeply affecting love story, this singular novel is perhaps most profoundly an anatomy of American loneliness. Gabe Habash is a writer of powerful gifts, and this is a wonderful book.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You “Habash writes about the raw physicality of wrestling better than anybody this side of John Irving. . . . A lively, occasionally harrowing journey into obsession.” —Kirkus “Stephen Florida’s grim portrait of ambition led astray captures how competitiveness and masculinity can unravel those who blindly follow its codes.” —The Atlantic "Habash has a great eye for the ways in which our public identities and private insecurities are shaped by happenstance. Stephen Florida is full of vim and invention, good jokes and built-up bodies, unexpected sentences." —Paris Review Daily “A striking, original, and coarsely poetic portrayal of a young man’s athletic and emotional quest.” —Publishers Weekly, boxed and starred review “Habash has created a fascinating protagonist in Stephen, a hard-driven athlete with a convincingly thoughtful mind…” —The New York Times Sunday Book Review “An early candidate for BEST COVER OF THE YEAR AND MAYBE ALL TIME, Gabe Habash’s debut novel of love, obsession, and wrestling is yet another compelling reason to avoid college sports.” —Literary Hub “I'm pinned to the mat by this one.” —The Quivering Pen “For the person who wants sentences tight as rope, as tendons, as muscles, and just as sinuous.” —Nylon “In this novel, wrestling is really a pretext to introduce us to a powerful and engrossing new consciousness—Stephen’s struggle is to come to grips with the grinding willfulness that both enables and hobbles everything he does. Plus, Habash’s prose is dryly hilarious.” —Publishers Weekly “[Stephen Florida] reads as a confessional — like a diary that’s had its lock ripped off of it and the pages written in blood.” —Electric Literature “Stephen Florida is an obsession, but not just with wrestling — he is the taut, erratic, boundless contradiction of what it means to be alive.” —Los Angeles Review of Books blog “[Stephen is] fixated on his last chance to win the state championship, and the true pleasure of the novel is the revelation of Stephen’s interior life as contrasted with the regimented, joyless routine of his exterior one. This is a fantastic book, starring one of the most fully-fleshed characters you’ll meet this summer.” —Barnes & Noble Reads “Dark, engrossing, and unendingly weird, Stephen Florida is a tribute to the beauty and terror of obsessive madness.” —Necessary Fiction “Habash describes his protagonist’s bouts with brio and expertise. He also conveys the young man’s single-minded obsession powerfully, even poetically.” —Star Tribune “Stephen Florida is brash and audacious; it's not just one of the best novels of the year, it's one of the best sports books to come along in quite a while. It's an accomplishment that's made all the more stunning by Habash's status as a debut novelist: It's his first time on the mat, and he puts on a clinic.” —NPR “The prose is dizzyingly good.” —Huffington Post “[Stephen Florida is] a dark and twisty tale of ambition: ambition in overdrive, ambition that hauls its dark heavy tarp over everything else in your life.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn “Habash’s debut is a memorable portrait of obsession to the edge of madness and the loneliness that follows so single-minded a pursuit. Yet readers will gladly accompany the complex, thoughtful, not-always-likable Stephen through the season as he battles his own dark fears as much as any opponent.” —Library Journal, starred review “Like the other great obsessives that populate American literature — their common forebear is Ahab — Stephen’s seeming singularity reveals something essential about ourselves. His eccentricity doesn’t lead into crabbed corners but opens out onto philosophical expanses. What Habash offers in this powerful novel is a sad, sometimes funny, finally devastating anatomy of American loneliness.” —Electric Literature's Recommended Reading “Debut novelist Gabe Habash, bores deep into Stephen’s psyche, whose telescoping on his ultimate goal is terribly more intense—and limiting—than your average set of blinders. It’s a thrilling, sweaty ride.” —Extra Crispy “Stephen Florida is a detour down the dark alleys of a driven mind.” —Lincoln Journal Star “The writing is so stellar, the journey so fully earned, and the ending is as satisfying as they come. Stephen Florida is a novel I’ll come back to as much for its literary merit as for its storytelling…” —The Masters Review “The tale that Habash has picked up to tell us – which looks at first like any other old pebble in the driveway—reveals itself as a fire opal: full of shifting lights, seductive flashes of colour and mutability.” —Babara Epler, TANK “As a character study, Stephen’s is convincingly, comically, realistically weird, his seeming every thought marvelously relayed. This, plus beautiful sentences and an evocative North Dakota setting in the not-so-distant past, mark a promising debut.” —Booklist “In Stephen, author Gabe Habash has created an unforgettable protagonist, whose wry, dark voice has a peculiar strength to it; it’s impossible, while reading, not to feel like the sentences are almost stalking you, wrapping themselves in and around you, pinning you down for the count. . . . Surrender, and see how far you can push your mind’s limits.” —Nylon “Gabe Habash wrote a very good book… Habash has a serious knack for taking a dense subject and pacing or parsing it dynamically enough to be compelling.” —National Post "A spellbinding coming-of-age novel. . . . It’s a deeply satisfying peek into the mind and heart of a troubled young man trying desperately to rein in the chaotic and multiplying forces of a world he cannot control." —Toronto Star “Everyone needs to read this immediately because I’m dying to talk about it, which is something I never thought I would say about a book with this much wrestling in it.” —Catapult Community “This is no niche novel aimed solely at wrestling enthusiasts. Habash’s oddball narrator will charm anyone who roots for an underdog—or, in his words, who `falls for life’s left-behinds.’”—The National “In this burningly, bitterly funny tale of college student Stephen, who throws himself into wrestling to face down his fears… Habash effectively relates the raw physicality of wrestling and the raw emotions of growing up.” —Library Journal “With darkly funny and electric, affecting prose, Habash has created an oddball for the ages. Stephen Florida is not to be missed.” —Lincoln Thompson, BuzzFeed Books newsletter “You'll ache, you'll fear, you'll rage, you'll hurt, and you'll hate along with Florida as he wrestles for glory. There's not one word of this novel I didn't love.” —Writer's Bone “You want to be Stephen Florida, if just for a little while, to relive past glories or to just ponder the path not taken.” —BookPage “Stephen Florida is a wonderful, refreshing book with especially intimate access to Stephen's loneliness and obsession.” —Powell’s Books “An investigation of masculinity that’s in turns funny, creepy, and devastating, Stephen Florida does for the half-nelson what Whiplash did for drum fills.” —Type Books “Habash has created something bizarre, comic, and truly engrossing in Stephen Florida. Florida’s first-person interiority, painted in masterful, jagged brushstrokes of insight and narrow-mindedness, gains in understanding, and selfish short-sightedness, does a remarkable job of mirroring the thought patterns of young males while creating the most gripping eccentric protagonist since Confederacy of Dunces. Through Florida’s unique lens, Habash provides a fascinating, fresh look at estrangement, competition, isolation, the American Midwest and West, and devotion to a cause. I already can’t stop talking about this one!” —Annie Harvieux, Magers & Quinn “In Gabe Habash’s hands, Stephen Florida is utterly engrossing. The compelling voice of this book drew me in right away, and it wasn’t long before this character was a real person to me, and someone who I found myself loving and rooting for.” —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will “Funny, compelling and weird. None of us could put [Stephen Florida] down.” —Books & Books at the Studios of Key West, Judy Blume “In the middle of Stephen Florida, the narrator’s love interest, his art class crush, says of their college, `I didn’t learn anything I didn’t want to learn. It was a reality I wasn’t surprised by. When I met you I felt like someone was trying to make it up to me.’ Reader, that’s how I felt after finishing Stephen Florida. Years of reading ho-hum, predictable fiction were all at once cancelled out by the many thrills and occasional chills of Stephen Florida’s kinetic, irresistibly strange voice. Habash’s novel zeroes in on the forces that act on obsessive, competitive, and disturbed persons. Or person: Stephen Florida, a name for the ages. Habash seems deeply concerned with the thinning borderline between innocence and experience. His narrator attempts for almost three hundred pages to figure out, and sometimes exceed, the limitations of his mind and body. Lucky is the reader who gets to spend time parsing Florida’s only seemingly limited intellect and seeing/feeling his skills and abilities in the wrestling ring. I couldn’t look away, even when Habash lowered the lights and sent his reader to the ledge of an abyss. Pick up his book, read its first lines, and be glad to follow him there.” —John Francisconi, Bank Square Books “Stephen is one of the more exceptional characters in recent literature, and his voice, as he tries to move forward through his tightly circumscribed life, is both haunting and hilarious.” —Powells Books Blog “A fascinating character study, that somehow happens to be thrilling and even horrifying. I'm so glad I read this book!” —Unabridged Bookstore “Not since The Art of Fielding have I read a sports novel this captivating. Stephen Florida is about a wrestler’s quest for glory. Stephen, a senior at Oregsburg College, has his mind set on winning nationals at 133 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Each practice and match brings him closer to his goal, and delivers him further from his sanity. This novel shows how compulsively people pursue greatness, and the anguish felt at each shortcoming. Stephen Florida, in short, is a novel of a man slowly losing his mind in pursuit of greatness.” —Hunter Gillum “One of the best sports novels I’ve ever read, and surely one of the year’s best novels, period.” —Diesel Bookstore
£17.09
