Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction

Book SynopsisA propulsive, darkly gripping novel about the power and paradoxes of human longing, faith, trauma and taboo, from the acclaimed author of The Amateurs, shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award.A fractured portrait of a darkly riveting sibling relationship from the inside out, Strange Loops is an electrifying, intelligent and emotionally charged second novel from an award-winning young literary star on the rise.Francine and her twin brother Philip share a powerful bond in childhood that fades as they became young adults. When Philip unexpectedly becomes intensely religious, his sister decides to join his Christian youth group and soon becomes infatuated with the youth pastor. Obsessed by this transgression and what he sees as his sister's moral impropriety, Philip eventually uncovers a dark secret that threatens to shatter his faith and estranges the two siblings for decades. Later, as an adult, even as the storm clouds of resentmen

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Book SynopsisINTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Financial Times, Slate, The Chicago Public Library, Kirkus, The TelegraphA Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick[A] savagely satirical thriller. -PeopleThe Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries brings us Birnam Wood, a gripping thriller of high drama and kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.Birnam Wood is on the move . . . A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand's South Island, cutting o? the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice.

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Book SynopsisA woman spills the story of her life to a bar full of strangers, in the acerbic first novel from Laura Adamczyk.Anything can become the story of your life if you let it, and I suppose this became mine.In Island City, a wry, wistful woman, estranged from her family, sells her belongings and moves back to her hometown in the Midwest. To her, it's the perfect place to give up. She wants to get rid of everythingher stuff, her ambitions. Before making a messy exit, she holes up in a dark bar and tells her stories to an audience of indifferent strangers. There's the time the river dried up and you could walk across its bed; the day her sister got clobbered at the nursing home; when her dad got cancer, then Alzheimer's, then cancer again. Now she's forgetting things the way he did, words slipping away. That third drink isn't helping.Laura Adamczyk, whose writing is super weird and super unsettling (Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Globe), c

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Book Synopsis“Elegantly unnerving.” —New York Times Book ReviewTrade Review"Brilliantly constructed, The Shades is ghostly and alive, cerebral and sensuous, an absolutely riveting read." -- Scott Cheshire - Los Angeles Times"An absorbing book by an author who knows how to create organic suspense without ever overplaying her hand.… Intricately plotted and perfectly paced.… An excellent debut novel that deals heavily with death, but still feels alive, compassionate and full of truths." -- Michael Schaub - NPR"A dense, powerful novel." -- Chloe Schama and Bridget Read - Vogue"When an intriguing young woman turns up at the family’s country house and strikes up a relationship with the family’s matriarch, Catherine, a mystery is set in motion, lending the firmly contemporary The Shades a quiet echo of such classic psychological thrillers as The Turn of the Screw and Rebecca." -- Julia Vitale and Keziah Weir - Vanity Fair"This psychological thriller explores the mysteries surrounding a family still reeling from profound tragedy, and the terrifying uncertainty that meets their relocation in a distant country manor." -- David Canfield - Entertainment Weekly"This haunted tale follows a couple mourning the loss of their teenage daughter.… [The Shades] harkens back to such ghostly thrillers as du Maurier’s Don’t Look Back." -- CrimeReads"If you’re looking for a mystery to keep you on the edge of your seat, add this electrifying new novel by Evgenia Citkowitz to your reading list." -- Caroline Rogers - Southern Living"Spare, arresting, and emotionally precise. A thoroughly modern novel with a Gothic feel; a fully realized vision." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"[Citkowitz’s] prose sparkles as she unpacks emotional wounds.… This compact family drama captures the thinly masked desperation of grief with an eerie undercurrent." -- Publishers Weekly"With a deceptively light touch and an almost ethereal atmosphere, debut novelist Citkowitz delves deeply into themes of loss and grief, reality and illusion, and growth and stagnation.… [The Shades] is richly layered with meaning and allusions to myth and art that make it an engaging and rewarding read." -- Booklist

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Book SynopsisNamed a Best Crime and Thriller of the Year by The Guardian and Irish Times An English teacher is gaslit by his charismatic high school bully in this tense story of deception, manipulation, and murder.Trade Review"Habib ramps up the paranoia to Highsmithian levels." -- Laura Wilson - Guardian"A supremely tense debut, Conner Habib’s Hawk Mountain channels Patricia Highsmith by way of Hitchcock....Habib builds the sense of dread with slow, carefully meted out notes of obsession and intuition." -- CrimeReads"So, so dark. I loved it. Pure tension. A great book." -- Anthony Jeselnik - The Jeselnik & Rosenthal Vanity Project"A menacing page-turner....Habib has created a small but visceral world, terrifying in its realism and heartbreaking in its portrayal. Gaslighting, masculinity and cycles of abuse are all skillfully handled in a story that is, to put it lightly, not for the faint of heart." -- Andrea Cleary - Business Post Ireland"This masterful debut explores the darkest matter with a surprising and unnerving relatability and is a page-turner in the most classic sense." -- Lisa Connell - Gay Community News"There's a lot going on here and Habib skilfully manages to juggle it all, entangling the reader in a gripping narrative, one we can identify more with as each page turns." -- Pat Carty - Hot Press"Impossible to put down....Conner Habib has written a debut novel which has the style, elevated prose and assurance of a much more experienced novelist." -- Susan McKeever - Books Ireland"Conner Habib’s debut novel is a bleak, dark adrenaline rush." -- Clive Barker"Dripping with menace from the first page, this story of childhood enemies meeting up fifteen years later is utterly enthralling.… [C]ompelling, shocking, and beautiful." -- Liz Nugent, author of Lying in Wait"Tender, horrifying, utterly transfixing." -- Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble"A deeply disturbing yet, somehow, soaring novel I won’t soon forget. It plumbs the depths of traumatized characters trapped within our damaging culture. I couldn’t look away, even when I was looking from between my fingers." -- Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club"The opening lines of Hawk Mountain plummet you into an atmosphere of creeping dread and precarious restraint that won’t let up until the final, shocking moments." -- Caitlin Doughty, bestselling author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes"Hawk Mountain is deft horror, made of precise strikes into our most vulnerable psychic terrain… Finally, a horror story that knows cisheteropatriarchy is the villain!" -- Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl"Conner Habib writes with [a] hallucinatory precision, and a kind of merciless humanity, about the poisonous work of repression. His forebears—Poe, Highsmith, even classical tragedy—are clear, but his originality is clearer still. Hawk Mountain is a work of strange, glittering darkness." -- Mark O’Connell, author of Notes from an Apocalypse"A brilliantly disturbing, expertly crafted literary noir that will stick with you long after you put it down. Conner Habib has written a flawless meditation on the fruitless, but eternally human, effort to kill off the parts of ourselves we cannot love—literally and metaphorically. I love this book." -- Sara Gran, author of The Infinite Blacktop"A moving and unflinching portrayal of a man caught in a trap of his own making, but willing to do almost anything—to almost anybody—if it will keep him from having to face up to himself. Hawk Mountain is a wonderfully bleak and beautifully written debut." -- Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World"Habib’s unique examination of his flawed and fascinating characters as the victims and sources of violence is both disturbing and insightful. ...With haunting prose and deeply atmospheric descriptions, Hawk Mountain is a disturbing descent into the convulsions of the human mind and heart." -- Maya Fleischmann - BookPage"Habib brings rich psychological insight to his characters, expertly observing how the conflicts of youth persist into Todd and Jack’s present. …[T]his dramatic tale soars." -- Publishers Weekly"The tension is palpable on every page, and Habib skillfully illustrates the complexity of relationships and the pain of unmet desires, both queer and otherwise. His prose is as brutal as it is profound and beautiful. …A brutal and gorgeous tale of manipulation, control, and desire." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"This heart-pounding thriller will have readers furiously turning pages…this gorgeous debut affirms [Habib’s] stunning gift for dissecting humanity." -- Booklist (starred review)

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Book SynopsisA “mesmerizing” novel from the acclaimed author of The Emperor’s Children that is “as artful as it is affecting” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).

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Book SynopsisIn 1726, in the town of Godalming, England, a woman confounded the nation’s medical community by giving birth to seventeen rabbits. This astonishing true story is the basis for Dexter Palmer’s stunning, powerfully evocative new novel.   Surgeon’s apprentice Zachary Walsh knows that his master, John Howard, prides himself on his rationality. But John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local journeyman, has managed to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event be­comes a regular occurrence, John and Zach­ary realize that nothing in their experience as rural physicians has prepared them to deal with a situation like this—strange, troubling, and possibly miraculous. John contacts sev­eral of London’s finest surgeons, three of whom soon arrive in Godalming to observe, argue, and perhaps use the case to cultivate their own fame.   When King George I learns of Mary’s plight, she and her doct

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Book SynopsisKif Kehlmann, a young, penniless writer, thinks he’s finally caught a break when he’s offered $10,000 to ghostwrite the memoir of Siegfried “Ziggy” Heidl, the notorious con man and corporate criminal. Ziggy is about to go to trial for defrauding banks for $700 million; they have six weeks to write the book.   But Ziggy swiftly proves almost impossible to work with: evasive, contradictory, and easily distracted by his still-running “business concerns”—which Kif worries may involve hiring hitmen from their shared office. Worse, Kif finds himself being pulled into an odd, hypnotic, and ever-closer orbit of all things Ziggy. As the deadline draws near, Kif becomes increasingly unsure if he is ghostwriting a memoir, or if Ziggy is rewriting him—his life, his future, and the very nature of the truth.   By turns comic, compelling, and finally chilling, First Person is a haunting look at an age where fact is indistinguishable from fiction, and freedom is traded for a false idea of progress.

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Book SynopsisOne of the New York Times Book Review's Top Ten Best Crime Novels of 2020One of USA Today's Best Books of 2020[A] hypnotic debut. . . .[An] uncommonly clever whodunit. --The New York Times Book ReviewA thrilling debut novel perfect for lovers of Agatha Christie and The Secret History, exploring deceit, first love, and the depths to which obsession can drive us.People disappear when they most want to be seen.Jess Walker has come to a concrete campus under the flat gray skies of East Anglia for one reason: to be taught by the mesmerizing and rebellious Dr. Lorna Clay, whose seminars soon transform Jess's thinking on life, love, and Agatha Christie. Swept up in Lorna's thrall, Jess falls in with a tightly knit group of rule-breakers--until the dynamic among the friends begins to darken. When a tragedy shatters their friendships and love affairs and reveals a terrible secret, Jess must face the question she fears

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Book SynopsisFrom the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes “a brilliant, rueful look at love—what we do for it, how we experience it and what makes it die” (People). One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, nineteen-year-old Paul comes home from university and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. There he’s partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who’s forty-eight, confident, witty, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is a warm companion, her bond with Paul immediate. And soon, inevitably, they are lovers. Basking in the glow of one another, they set up house together in London. Decades later, Paul looks back at how they fell in love and how—gradually, relentlessly—everything fell apart. As he turns over his only story in his mind, examining it from different vantage points, he finds himself confronted with the contradictions and slips

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF SPAIN'S NATIONAL CRITICS AWARD • From the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Infatuations comes a gripping novel of intrigue and missed chances—at once a spy story and a profound examination of a marriage founded on concealment. • A masterly premise ... worthy of a Hitchcock adaptation. —The New York Times Book ReviewWhen Berta Isla was a schoolgirl, she decided she would marry Tomás Nevinson—the dashing half-Spanish, half-English boy in her class with an extraordinary gift for languages. But when Tomás returns to Madrid from his studies at Oxford, he is a changed man. Unbeknownst to her, he has been approached by an agent from the British intelligence services, and he has unwittingly set in motion events that will derail forever the life they had planned. With peerless insight into the most shadowed corners of the human soul, Marías plunges the

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Book SynopsisA comic novel about a Midwestern professor who tries to prop up his failing prospects for happiness by setting out on the Journey of a Lifetime.Louie Hake is forty-three and teaches architectural history at a third-rate college in Michigan. His second marriage is collapsing, and he's facing a potentially disastrous medical diagnosis. In an attempt to fend off what has become a soul-crushing existential crisis, he decides to treat himself to a tour of the world's most breathtaking architectural sites. Perhaps not surprisingly, Louie gets waylaid on his very first stop in Rome--ludicrously, spectacularly so--and fails to reach most of his other destinations. He embarks on a doomed romance with a jilted bride celebrating her ruined marriage plans alone in London. And in the Arctic he finds that turf houses and aluminum sheds don't amount to much of an architectural tradition. But it turns out that there's another sort of architecture there: icebergs the size of cathedrals,

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Book SynopsisA deeply affecting debut novel set in Trinidad, following the lives of a family as they navigate impossible choices about scarcity, loyalty, and loveWINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE • “Golden Child is a stunning novel written with force and beauty.  Though true to herself, Adam's work stands tall beside icons of her tradition like V.S. Naipaul.”—Jennifer Clement, author of Gun LoveRural Trinidad: a brick house on stilts surrounded by bush; a family, quietly surviving, just trying to live a decent life. Clyde, the father, works long, exhausting shifts at the petroleum plant in southern Trinidad; Joy, his wife, looks after the home. Their two sons, thirteen years old, wake early every morning to travel to the capital, Port of Spain, for school. They are twins but nothing alike: Paul has always been considered odd, while Peter is widely believed to be a genius, destined for greatness.<

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Book SynopsisLet’s not mince words. This is a great book. Truly difficult to put down... sophisticated, smart and uncomfortable, and the story is cracking. – Lionel Shriver, Washington Post Startlingly good...Osborne has been described as an heir to Graham Greene, and he shares with Greene an interest in what might be called the moral thriller.” – Katie Kitamura, New York Times Book ReviewA seductively menacing new thriller by Lawrence Osborne...who unites Graham Greene’s fondness for foreign soil with Patricia Highsmith’s fascination with the nastier coils of the human psyche.” –NPR’s “Fresh AirFINANCIAL TIMES SUMMER PICK 2017GUARDIAN BEST HOLIDAY READS 2017 On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. Naomi, the daughter of a wealthy British art collector who has owned a villa in the exclusive hills for decades, convinces Sam, a younger American girl on vacation with her family, to help this stranger. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.In this brilliant psychological study of manipulation and greed, Lawrence Osborne explores the dark heart of friendship, and shows just how often the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Bowen’s deceptively simple novel opens with the weddings of two quietly conventional sisters: Laurel to Edward, and Janet to Rodney. Ten years later, one intense week is all it takes to unravel the couples’ peaceful lives as a long-concealed secret explodes to the surface. The repercussions ripple through four different families connected by the two marriages, hinging on the comic interventions of such vivid characters as Edward’s mother, the glamorous and scandal-ridden Lady Elfrida; Rodney’s notorious rake of an uncle; and a stridently awkward teenager, Theodora, who is keen to insert herself into the drama. Humor and pain abound in Friends and Relations, as Bowen weaves the barest hints of menace and the subtlest nuances of emotion into this devastating tale of the tangled web of human relationships.

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Book SynopsisA woman hires a housekeeper to care for her aging parents—only to watch as she takes over their lives in this riveting novel from the New York Times bestselling author Samantha M. Bailey calls “an ingenious master of domestic suspense.”ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Reader’s DigestIn the end, I have only myself to blame. I’m the one who let her in.Jodi Bishop knows success. She’s the breadwinner, a top-notch real estate agent. Her husband, Harrison . . . not so much. Once, he had big dreams. But now, he’s a middling writer who resents his wife’s success.Jodi’s father, Vic, now in his late seventies and retired, is a very controlling man. His wife, Audrey, was herself no shrinking violet. But things changed when Audrey developed Parkinson’s ten years ago and Vic retired to devote himself to her care. But while still reasonably spry and rakishly handsome, Vic

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Book SynopsisWickedly funny. Wildly twisty. The new book from the master of the heist novel. “A super-thief who leaves no trace.”—Andy Garcia “An anti-hero for our times.”—Sarah Dunn “A can't-miss master.”—David Baldacci Super thief Riley Wolfe can do it all. He is a master of disguise, can scale a wall, and can vanish into thin air (thick air, too). He uses these unique talents to rob the richest. But this time, it’s the most powerful who have him in their grips. ONE MADMAN. TWO HOSTAGES. It’s not just that the high-up, rogue government agent has abducted the only two people Riley loves: it’s the fact that Riley has to do the man’s dirty work to set them free. It’s something Riley ordinarily would find a modest day’s work, infiltrating a madman’s Soviet missile silo in one of the world’s most remote places, all to f

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Book SynopsisTwo girls went into the woods. Only one came back. . . .Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens is on the trail in this “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) crime novel from the acclaimed author of She Lies in Wait, Watching from the Dark, and Lie Beside MeONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: BookPageJonah Sheens is enjoying a moment of peace in a pub garden on his day off when a teenage girl wanders out of the woods. She’s striking, with flame-red hair and a pale complexion. She’s also covered in blood. When Jonah races to help, the girl insists she’s fine. Then she smiles. It’s her sister he needs to worry about. Keely and her sister, Nina, disappeared from a children’s home a week ago. Now Keely is here—but Nina’s still missing. Jonah is sure Keely knows where her sister is—but before she tells him anything, she insists, he has to listen to

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Book SynopsisThis irreverent debut delivers a headlong human comedy of trauma and triumph, narrated by the concealed inner selves of a woman on the brink: Katherine, a lost creative soul and suburban mother of two, who has struggled into her forties with the urge to self-harm.Tracks the scattered parts of one woman as she fractures and finds herself over the course of her lifetime. A wholly original and unforgettable debut. —Julia Phillips, best-selling author of Disappearing EarthKatherine, an attentive mother to her teenagers, comfortably married to her strapping provider of a husband, longs to overcome her dark thoughts and intermittent fears of sexual intimacy.This brisk, mesmerizing version of her life is told in alternating short chapters by Truitt, Star, and Smooshed Bug—her inner children, each with their particular strategy for coping with Katherine’s past at the hands of a hopeless mother and a terrifying, seductive father. Several o

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Book SynopsisThis provocative, fiercely imaginative debut follows a woman trying to slip the shackles of society by controlling her body and mind in extreme ways, by one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.“Chrysalis is a thrilling look at how we spin silk around ourselves by watching the world on our screens.”—The New York Times Book ReviewIt was hard to be in the present, she said, but if her body were heavier and more in control, then her thoughts would clear and her mind would recover its power.What happens when a woman dares to take up space? An enigmatic young woman drastically transforms her body, working to become bigger, stronger, and stiller in the wake of a trauma. We see her through the eyes of three people, each differently mesmerized by her, as they reckon with the consequences of her bizarre metamorphosis. Each of them leaves us with a puzzle piece of who she was before she became

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Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND GLAMOUR!“One of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads… Going to keep readers turning pages late into the night.” –The New York Times “Ingenious…fresh and unpredictable.” –The Washington Post“Gleefully overturn[s] the age-old ‘woman-in-trouble’ plot…eerie and inventive.” –NPR's Fresh Air What if the murder you had to solve was your own?Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questi

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Book SynopsisNew York Times bestselling author Caroline Kepnes, whose acclaimed YOU series inspired the hit show on Netflix, follows “addictively charming antihero” (The Washington Post) Joe Goldberg to the hallowed halls of Harvard, where he leaves crimson in his wake. “Twisted . . . delightfully creepy.”—Rolling StoneJoe Goldberg is ready for a change. Instead of selling books, he’s writing them. And he’s off to a good start. Glenn Shoddy, an acclaimed literary author, recognizes Joe’s genius and invites him to join a tight-knit writing fellowship at Harvard. Finally, Joe will be in a place where talent matters more than pedigree . . . where intellect is the great equalizer and anything is possible. Even happy endings. Or so he thinks, until he meets his already-published, already-distinguished peers, who all seem to be cut from the same elitist cloth.Thank

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Book SynopsisA wry comic novel with an acerbic wit, A Hero of Our Time is a vicious takedown of superficial diversity initiatives and tech culture, with a beating heart of broken sincerity.Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinson’s quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education.Osman, obsessed by Olivia’s ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia''s twisted past. But at every turn, he''s stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confr

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Book Synopsis2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist For readers of My Dark Vanessa, a mesmerizing, disturbing, and thoroughly compelling novel about one woman’s role in preserving—or destroying—her famous father’s legacy.In front of me are hundreds of pages of work. Already I feel it leaving me. He will obliterate what is there, replace it, deny I ever wrote a word. But, he cannot take the words I write on my own.Hillary Greene’s father, once a celebrated author and public figure, is now losing his memory and, with it, his ability to write. As her father’s primary caretaker, each day begins with two eggs, boiled and Charlie Rose or some other host on the iPad screen. Her father compulsively watches himself in old interviews, memorizing his own speech, trying to hang on to who he was.An aspiring author herself, Hillary impulsively agrees to ghost-write his final work—a memoir spanning his career—and release it in his name. Diving deep into her father’s past, and in turn her own, a horrifying truth begins to piece itself together.With full control over her father’s memoir, Hillary is faced with a stark choice: reveal her father as a monster or preserve his legacy as a respected literary figure. But she wonders what writing the truth will do to her and if it will damage her own prospects for a career. Whichever option she chooses, Hillary has to deal with the significant pain writing the memoir has re-surfaced—specifically, how the truth about her father adds to her grief over the death of her enigmatic sister, Pauline. For the first time in her life, Hillary holds the power.Set in the wake of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, What We Both Know is a visceral, intimate, and complex novel about confronting the personal and professional consequences—and potentially devastating fallout—of revealing the truth about a famous man.

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Book SynopsisHarry Mathews’s last novel is one of his most accessible—and perhaps one of his bestTrade Review"The Solitary Twin is the perfect endnote for Harry Mathews and a superb point of entry for new readers, encapsulating his lifelong commitment to formal invention while simply being an excellent novel in its own right." -- J.W. McCormack - BOMB Magazine"An imagination and an ingenuity that are often just astonishing." -- Harper's"An imagination and an ingenuity that are often just astonishing." -- Harper's"A fascinating, discursive swan song that celebrates the power of stories." -- Tyler Malone - La Times"As the novel circles closer to the grand reveal promised by its title, Mathews toys with the reader’s 'desire to resolve the irresolute, to conclude the incomplete, to have the crooked made straight.' The result is an undeniably clever parting shot from one of contemporary literature’s most playfully challenging writers." -- Publishers Weekly"One of the most remarkable prose stylists presently writing in English." -- San Francisco Chronicle"Posthumous books almost always feel half-formed, coincidental, unpublished for a reason....The Solitary Twin, however, may well be the last great surprise Mathews pulled out of his deep bag of tricks. It is funny, perplexing, consistent and unusual, with all the characteristic Mathews obsessions. It may also be one of the best places to start enjoying his work." -- The New York Times Book Review"Comic extravaganza that plays mockingly with every device of fiction." -- Washington Post Book World"Like Roubaud and Perec, Mathews engineers a funhouse labyrinth in which guise disfigures guise and the logic that reigns is that of representation." -- Village Voice"Comic extravaganza that plays mockingly with every device of fiction." -- Washington Post Book World

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